War and Local Collective Action in Sierra Leone
Journal of Public Economics 93 (2009) 1144–1157 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Public Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jpube War and local collective action in Sierra Leone John Bellows a, Edward Miguel b,⁎ a Dept. of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, USA b Dept. of Economics, 508-1 Evans Hall #3880, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3880, USA article info abstract Article history: We study the brutal 1991–2002 Sierra Leone civil war using nationally representative household data on Received 28 December 2008 conflict experiences, postwar economic outcomes, local politics and collective action. Individuals whose Received in revised form 25 July 2009 households directly experienced more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community Accepted 29 July 2009 meetings, more likely to join local political and community groups, and more likely to vote. Tests using Available online 21 August 2009 prewar controls and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results. More speculatively, the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar political and economic Keywords: Civil war recoveries observed in Sierra Leone and after several other recent African civil wars. Africa © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Collective action Local public goods Sierra Leone 1. Introduction findings are consistent with the predictions of the neoclassical growth model, which predicts rapid catch-up growth postwar. This paper analyzes a novel nationally representative dataset from However, the neoclassical growth model has little to say about the postwar Sierra Leone with the goal of better understanding the short- impact of war on institutions, politics, and social norms, and it is run economic and political impacts of civil war.
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