“The Long-Term Causal Effect of US Bombing Missions on Economic Development: Evidence from the Ho Chi Minh Trail and Xieng Khouang Province in Lao P.D.R”, 2021-05-01 ():
Investigates the long-term causal effects of bombings on later economic development.
Focus on Laos that is one of the most intensely bombed countries per capita in history.
Use granular grid data, nightlights or population, as proxies of economic development.
No robust effects of bombings in southern Laos, but some effects in northern Laos.
No within-country conditional economic convergence, which could be Lao specific.
This study investigates the long-term causal effects of US bombing missions during the Vietnam War on later economic development in Laos. Following an instrumental variables approach, we use the distance between the centroid of village-level administrative boundaries and heavily bombed targets, namely, the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos and Xieng Khouang Province in northern Laos, as an instrument for the intensity of US bombing missions. We use three datasets of mean nighttime light intensity (199232ya, 2005, and 2013) and two datasets of population density (1990 and 2005) as outcome variables. The estimation results show no robust long-term effects of US bombing missions on economic development in southern Laos but show negative effects in northern Laos, even 40 years after the war. We also found that the results do not necessarily support the conditional convergence hypothesis within a given country, although this result could be unique to Laos.
[Keywords: conflict damage, economic development, conditional convergence hypothesis, Lao P.D.R]