DOI resolved by resea

The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country

This article investigates the economic effects of conflict, using the terrorist conflict in the Basque Country as a case study. We find that, after the outbreak of terrorism in the late 196…

Alberto Abadie, Javier Gardeazábal
https://resea.org/10.1257/000282803321455188

Abstract

This article investigates the economic effects of conflict, using the terrorist conflict in the Basque Country as a case study. We find that, after the outbreak of terrorism in the late 1960's, per capita GDP in the Basque Country declined about 10 percentage points relative to a synthetic control region without terrorism. In addition, we use the 1998–1999 truce as a natural experiment. We find that stocks of firms with a significant part of their business in the Basque Country showed a positive relative performance when truce became credible, and a negative relative performance at the end of the cease-fire.