IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/trb/wpaper/1999.10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economic Cost of the War in Sri Lanka

Author

Listed:
  • Nisha Arunatilake

    (School of Economics, La Trobe University)

  • Sisira Kumara Jayasuriya

    (School of Economics, La Trobe University)

  • Saman Kelegama

    (School of Economics, La Trobe University)

Abstract

There is growing interest in recent years in the economic dimensions of civil wars and other violent social conflicts. This paper discusses some of the conceptual and methodological problems associated with assessing the economic costs of such conflicts, and presents an evaluation of the costs of the (still ongoing) conflict in Sri Lanka. On conservative assumptions, the war may have cost the equivalent of twice Sri Lanka's 1996 GDP.

Suggested Citation

  • Nisha Arunatilake & Sisira Kumara Jayasuriya & Saman Kelegama, 1999. "The Economic Cost of the War in Sri Lanka," Working Papers 1999.10, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
  • Handle: RePEc:trb:wpaper:1999.10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Collier, Paul & Hoeffler, Anke, 1998. "On Economic Causes of Civil War," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 563-573, October.
    2. Malcolm Knight & Norman Loayza & Delano Villanueva, 1996. "The Peace Dividend: Military Spending Cuts and Economic Growth," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 43(1), pages 1-37, March.
    3. Grobar, Lisa Morris & Gnanaselvam, Shiranthi, 1993. "The Economic Effects of the Sri Lankan Civil War," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 395-405, January.
    4. Deger, Saadet, 1986. "Economic Development and Defense Expenditure," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 179-196, October.
    5. Mizon, Grayham E., 1995. "A simple message for autocorrelation correctors: Don't," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 267-288, September.
    6. Meghan O'Sullivan, 1997. "Household entitlements during wartime: The experience of Sri Lanka," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 95-121.
    7. Lim, David, 1983. "Another Look at Growth and Defense in Less Developed Countries," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(2), pages 377-384, January.
    8. Premachandra Athukorala, 1995. "Foreign Direct Investment and Manufacturing for Export in a New Exporting Country: The Case of Sri Lanka," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(4), pages 543-564, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chang, Hsin-Chen & Huang, Bwo-Nung & Yang, Chin Wei, 2011. "Military expenditure and economic growth across different groups: A dynamic panel Granger-causality approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2416-2423.
    2. Alptekin, Aynur & Levine, Paul, 2012. "Military expenditure and economic growth: A meta-analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 636-650.
    3. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill & Siew Ling Yew, 2018. "The effect of military expenditure on growth: an empirical synthesis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1357-1387, November.
    4. Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee & Gour Goswami, 2006. "Military spending and the black market premium in developing countries," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 64(1), pages 77-91.
    5. Albert J.F. Yang & William N. Trumbull & Chin Wei Yang & Bwo‐Nung Huang, 2011. "On The Relationship Between Military Expenditure, Threat, And Economic Growth: A Nonlinear Approach," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 449-457, April.
    6. E. Desli & A. Gkoulgkoutsika, 2021. "Military spending and economic growth: a panel data investigation," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 781-806, August.
    7. Thorvaldur Gylfason & Gylfi Zoega, 2006. "Natural Resources and Economic Growth: The Role of Investment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(8), pages 1091-1115, August.
    8. Vusal Musayev, 2016. "Externalities in Military Spending and Growth: The Role of Natural Resources as a Channel through Conflict," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 378-391, June.
    9. Na Hou & Bo Chen, 2013. "Military Expenditure And Economic Growth In Developing Countries: Evidence From System Gmm Estimates," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 183-193, June.
    10. Oasis Kodila-Tedika & Sherif Khalifa, 2021. "African Junta and Defence Spending: A Capture Effect or Self-preservation? [A Theory of Military Dictatorships]," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE), vol. 30(3), pages 285-300.
    11. Tsangyao Chang & Chien-Chiang Lee & Hsiao-Ping Chu, 2015. "Revisiting the Defense-Growth nexus in European countries," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 341-356, June.
    12. Kimbambu Tsasa Vangu, Jean - Paul, 2012. "Analyse de la Relation Guerres Civiles et Croissance Économique [Civil Wars and Economic Growth in DRC]," MPRA Paper 42424, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Feb 2012.
    13. Bodea, Cristina & Higashijima, Masaaki & Singh, Raju Jan, 2016. "Oil and Civil Conflict: Can Public Spending Have a Mitigation Effect?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 1-12.
    14. Baddeley, M.C., 2008. "Poverty, Armed Conflict and Financial Instability," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0857, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    15. Ünal Töngür & Adem Yavuz Elveren, 2016. "The impact of military spending and income inequality on economic growth in Turkey," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 433-452, June.
    16. Deepak Lal, 1995. "Arms and the Man: The Costs and Benefits of Defense Expenditure," UCLA Economics Working Papers 747, UCLA Department of Economics.
    17. Arias Andrés F. & Laura Ardila, 2003. "Military Expenditure and Economic Activity: The Colombian Case," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, September.
    18. Ünal Töngür & Adem Yavuz Elveren, 2017. "The nexus of economic growth, military expenditures, and income inequality," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 1821-1842, July.
    19. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    20. Barrett, Philip, 2022. "The fiscal cost of conflict: Evidence from Afghanistan 2005–2017," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    War; Economic History; Costs;
    All these keywords.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:trb:wpaper:1999.10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Stephen Scoglio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sblatau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.