The Effect of Armed Conflict on Sustainable Development Goals

• In Event: The Political Economy of Internal Conflict

Abstract

This paper assesses the development consequences of armed conflict by assessing various levels of types of conflict and their effect on the 16 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in terms of economic growth. To assess the consequences of armed conflict, we compare what happened to the counter-factual -- what would the situation have been if civil war had not occurred. In an experimental sense, this implies comparing a treated case with armed conflict to an identical control case without conflict. In a quasi-experimental setting, we compare similar countries either by matching or by simulating the effects of conflict for a given country. Drawing on PRIO-Grid, we employ Coarsened Exact Matching to compare areas directly affected by armed conflict (the experimental treatment group) and those not (the experimental control group). Matching allows us to control for potentially confounding influences of pretreatment control variables. Our analysis provides new insights into the economic and development consequences of armed conflict.

Authors

• Scott Gates, PRIO and University of Oslo

• Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

• Håvard Strand, PRIO