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Essays on the Economic Impact of Conflict on Communities and Individuals Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Economics Dissertations Fall 12-17-2015 Essays on the Economic Impact of Conflict on Communities and Individuals Melissa Rose Trussell Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/econ_diss Recommended Citation Trussell, Melissa Rose, "Essays on the Economic Impact of Conflict on Communities and Individuals." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2015. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/econ_diss/119 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Economics Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF CONFLICT ON COMMUNITIES AND INDIVIDUALS By MELISSA ROSE TRUSSELL JUNE 2015 Committee Chair: Dr. James C. Cox Major Department: Economics This dissertation uses varying approaches to examine effects of war on communities and individuals in developing countries, specifically in Liberia, West Africa. The first essay is based on joint work with Robert Moore, which was published in 2012. In it, we use a case study of Saclepea, Liberia, to illustrate the role that an appropriately designed local economic development (LED) plan can play in a rural African community emerging from crisis. This case demonstrates the need for the involvement and cooperation of many parties, including multilateral aid agencies, local, national, and foreign government agencies, multilateral and other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local non-profit organizations, businesses, and individuals. Clear understanding of the stage of assistance (relief, rehabilitation, development) helps to define the role of each entity and the appropriate goals for specific developmental efforts. This case confirms that local participation and involvement in development efforts is an important factor in the sustainability and success of these efforts. The second essay seeks to answer questions of economic impact of child soldiering in Liberia. Specifically, I look at post-war earnings and educational attainment of former child soldiers, adult soldiers, and non-soldiers. The results indicate that the war in Liberia had different effects on soldiers than on non-soldiers but that the effects for soldiers do not differ greatly between those who fought as children and those who fought as adults. Moreover, contrary to intuition or to findings in previous literature, the lasting effects for former soldiers do not, in sum, seem to be negative. In the third essay, I take an experimental approach to understanding trust and trustworthiness among former child soldiers in Liberia. Liberian subjects’ decisions in the standard investment game indicate that former child soldiers do not differ in trusting behavior from either adult soldiers or non-soldiers. However, non-soldiers are less trusting than adult soldiers, and child soldiers are less trustworthy than those who started fighting as adults. In a sample of only former child soldiers, those who had only witnessed violence are more trustworthy than those who had been victims of violence. As a whole, Liberians in this experiment tend to trust more than Americans who played the same investment game in previous studies. The final essay examines many instances of the same investment game to explore the questions of how violence affects trusting and trustworthy behaviors and how those behaviors affect a country’s level of violence or peacefulness. Average responses of players in the investment game are compared across countries experiencing varying degrees of peacefulness as measured by the Institute of Economics and Peace’s (2015) Global Peace Index. The primary finding is that this macroeconomic peace index can predict trusting behavior but has no effect on trustworthy behavior. Trustworthiness, on the other hand, affects peacefulness. ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF CONFLICT ON COMMUNITIES AND INDIVIDUALS BY MELISSA ROSE TRUSSELL A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies of Georgia State University GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY 2015 Copyright by Melissa Rose Trussell 2015 ACCEPTANCE This dissertation was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s Dissertation Committee. It has been approved and accepted by all members of that committee, and it has been accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies of Georgia State University. Dissertation Chair: Dr. James C. Cox Committee: Dr. Robert E. Moore Dr. Kurt Schnier Dr. Volkan Topalli Electronic Version Approved: Mary Beth Walker, Dean Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Georgia State University December 2015 DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to a generation of Liberians whose childhoods were stolen by a war they neither asked for nor deserved. To the men and women whose experiences are represented in the pages that follow, thank you for trusting me with your stories. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my dissertation committee – James Cox, Robert Moore, Kurt Schnier, and Volkan Topalli – for their insight and guidance throughout this journey. In particular, I would like to thank my chair, Dr. Cox, for introducing me to experimental economics and for guiding me through the precise process of constructing and conducting an experiment in a developing country. I am indebted to my mentor Dr. Robert Moore for convincing me to become an economist and for believing in me when I did not. Thank you for making my passion your priority and for holding me to a standard of excellence. It is no exaggeration to say I would not be here without your leadership, mentorship, and friendship. I would like to thank my family and friends for your support and for providing therapeutic distractions from my work. To my parents, thank you for being my greatest cheerleaders and for never letting me believe your love or pride depend on my academic achievements. And to my Liberian family Pastor Monmia, Ma T, and all of Refuge Baptist Church, thank you for welcoming me into your community and into your families. To my brother Ocebeo Toway, thank you for providing your invaluable insights into Liberian culture and economy and for your tireless efforts in assisting me with the logistics of my experiment. And to Kalen Gary, thank you for making all of this possible – for travelling with me, for working so hard and so well to make my experiment happen without a hitch, for spending hours typing data into spreadsheets, and for sharing the emotional burden of hearing the heartbreaking stories of hundreds of Liberia’s former soldiers. (Sorry you got malaria; happy you survived.) v My essays benefitted from comments of each of the following: Thomas Mroz, Barry Hirsch, Julie Hotchkiss, Yi Li, Fernando Rios-Avila, Steve Skinner, and Sandy Skinner. My experimental procedures were developed with the benefit of feedback from my pilot subjects, Amanda Bathe, Jayme Breedlove, Lauren Dykstra, Michael Ellis, Yi Li, Mary Chase and Christopher Mize, Robert and Sarah Willis, and Xiaoran Yang. Dr. Christopher Blattman kindly provided access to the data used in Chapter 3. Funding for my 2014 trip to Saclepea and for the experiments I conducted there was provided by the Dean’s Office of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies through the Andrew Young School Dissertation Fellowship, the Experimental Economics Center in the Andrew Young School, and by the Georgia State University Dissertation Grant. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................. v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................................. xi LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................................... xii Chapter I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter II. Local Economic Development in Saclepea, Liberia ..................................................................... 3 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 3 The crisis: Liberian civil wars and their impact on Saclepea ..................................................................... 7 The restoration period ............................................................................................................................ 10 Relief ....................................................................................................................................................... 11 Disarmament ................................................................................................................................... 11 Rehabilitation .........................................................................................................................................
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