Conflict and Poverty in Afghanistan’s Transition
研究了阿富汗在塔利班倒台后经济增长但贫困率居高不下的矛盾，发现大规模驻军虽降低冲突强度，却通过增加消费和外国援助提高了贫困地区的消费水平，但2014年后驻军和援助减少导致生活水平急剧恶化。
Despite record economic growth in the decade that followed the fall of the Taliban regime, poverty remained stubbornly high in Afghanistan, declining substantially only in regions that suffered more from conflict. This paper aims to explain this apparent puzzle by combining conflict-related indicators at the province level with household level observations. Estimates, which start in 2007 and stop in 2014 because of data availability constraints, show that large troop deployments reduced conflict intensity but also boosted local consumption, an effect reinforced by foreign aid flows being larger in conflict-affected areas. The robustness of these findings is assessed through an out-of-sample simulation of the impact of declining international troops and foreign aid after 2014. The simulation accurately predicts the sharp deterioration in living standards uncovered by a 2016 household survey.