GCRF - Conflict and Private Economic activity: an analysis of new harmonised household data from sub-Saharan Africa (COPE)

一些缺乏证据表明，冲突影响了家庭在经济活动中的投资选择，例如减少了对资本密集程度相对较高的活动和长期回报活动的投资。然而，目前尚不清楚这些结果在多大程度上可以在冲突中推广，以及哪些其他因素可能影响这些影响的方向和强度。除了投资类型之外，冲突强度的变化如何影响投资和企业规模的增长也不清楚。本研究旨在通过提高我们对暴力冲突对不同成长潜力创业活动投资影响的理解，提供比较证据。方法将包括为撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）脆弱和冲突国家（FCS）建立一个新的数据集，以匹配和协调家庭调查和暴力冲突事件。我们将研究冲突如何影响家庭的私人投资类型——活动类型、公司规模和投资回报——以及制度、地理和个人特征如何影响这种创业选择。我们还将研究冲突强度的变化如何影响企业规模、投资和利润的增长。这个项目将做出一些重要的学术和政策贡献。首先，将研究重点从冲突对创业活动数量的影响转移到不同成长性创业活动的构成上。第二，它将改进在微观层面上确定冲突对企业活动和私营部门发展的平均影响。第三，它将大大提高我们对调解冲突对创业活动影响的制度、地理和冲突相关因素的理解。此外，将一大批国家包括在内，将使我们能够在若干国家和没有这种证据的冲突类型中检验这些影响的外部有效性。所有这些成就都将通过一种方法获得，该方法将通过使用一种新的工具变量策略和利用新的家庭面板数据集，可靠地确定冲突对经济活动的因果关系。最后，也是更重要的是，我们将能够检验冲突作为企业规模和投资增长障碍的影响。这项研究增加了对紧迫的社会和政策问题的辩论：冲突和经济增长。因此，它不仅与学术界特别相关，而且与决策者、和平建设者和维持和平者、在实地开展活动的非政府组织、雇主、公共、社会和私营企业、工会、培训机构以及寻求和使用就业和投资决策信息的劳动力中的青年和老年成员也特别相关。我们的传播计划确保我们的研究结果到达所有上述利益相关者，以告知他们的决策过程。

Some scant evidence exists that conflict influences households' investment choices in economic activities, for example by reducing investments in relatively more capital intensive activities and in activities with longer term returns. However it is unclear to what extent such results can be generalized across conflicts and what other factors may affect the direction and intensity of these effects. Beyond the type of investment, it is also not clear how changes in conflict intensity affect the growth of investment and firm size.This research aims to provide comparative evidence by improving our understanding of the impact of violent conflict on investment in entrepreneurial activities with different growth potentials. Methodology will consist in building a new dataset matching and harmonizing household surveys and violent conflict events for fragile and conflict states (FCS) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We will investigate how conflict affects the type of private investments by households - type of activity, firm size, and returns to investment - and how institutional, geographical, and individual characteristics influence this entrepreneurial choice. We will also investigate how changes in conflict intensity affect firm growth in size, investment, and profits. This project will make a number of crucial academic and policy contributions. Firstly, it will shift the focus from the effect of conflict on the number of entrepreneurial activities to the composition of entrepreneurial activities with different growth potentials. Secondly, it will improve on the identification of the average effect of conflict on entrepreneurial activity and private sector development at the micro level. Thirdly, it will improve substantially our understanding of the institutional, geographical and conflict related factors that mediate the impact of conflict on entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, the inclusion of a large set of countries will allow to test for the external validity of these effects across several countries and types of conflict on which no such evidence exists. All these achievement will be obtained through an approach that will credibly identify the causality of conflict on economic activity through the use of a novel instrumental variable strategy and exploiting a new household panel dataset. Lastly, and more importantly, we will be able to test the effect of conflict as a barrier to firm growth in size and investment.This research adds to a debate on pressing social and policy issues: conflict and economic growth. It is therefore particularly relevant not only for the academic community, but also for policy makers, peace builders and peace keepers, NGOs operating in the field, employers, public, social and private enterprises, trade unions, training institutions and young and old members of the workforce that seek and use information on employment and investment decisions. Our dissemination plan ensures that the findings of our research reach all the above stakeholders to inform their decision-making processes.