Armed conflict exposure and trust: evidence from a natural experiment*
利用土耳其强制兵役制度与长期内战形成的自然实验，研究发现服役期间经历武装冲突的男性更信任本群体，但对其他群体和一般信任无提升，且战场创伤者整体信任更低，这种内群体偏好可能阻碍社会资本积累与经济发展。
Abstract This study examines how exposure to armed conflict affects group-specific trust, focusing on individuals exposed during military service. Our identification strategy exploits a population-level natural experiment generated by Turkey’s strict military conscription system and its long-running civil conflict. We combine this setting with an original field survey to identify causal effects and examine individual-level mechanisms while minimizing contextual confounding. We find that men exposed to the armed conflict during their conscription service exhibit elevated ingroup trust, with no corresponding increase in trust toward outgroups or in generalized trust. In contrast, those with battlefield traumas display lower trust overall. Exposed veterans also display stronger ingroup-biased attitudes like nationalism, intolerance, religiosity, and adherence to social norms. These results suggest that conflict exposure shifts social preferences toward ingroup favouritism without strengthening broader forms of trust, a pattern that is likely to hinder the accumulation of social capital and, in turn, adversely affect long-run economic development and institutional quality.