Firms amid conflict: Performance, production inputs, and market competition
研究了冲突对企业经济绩效的影响机制，发现冲突降低企业收入、增加退出，且对依赖外国投入的企业影响更大，同时竞争减少会缓解收入下降。
We study the effect of conflict on firms’ economic performance and the underlying mechanisms. We develop a simple theoretical framework in which conflict reduces a firm’s output, induces input substitution, and increases firms’ exit. In our empirical analysis, we combine an original dataset of Libyan firms and geolocalized data on conflict events during the Second Libyan Civil War to show that, in line with the predictions of the model, conflict reduces a firm’s revenues and increases exit, relatively more for firms intensive in foreign inputs. We also document that, conditional on survival, the negative effect of conflict on revenues is non-linear, with its marginal effect decreasing as conflict intensity increases. Two mechanisms drive this result: the heterogeneous conflict-induced reduction in the availability of production inputs and the weaker market competition due to the conflict-induced decrease in the number of a firm’s competitors.