Economic integration fosters regional peace

Provides comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of the key themes and principles of conflict economics.

"This book ... emphasizes the role of economic factors in the conditions that lead to state collapse, give rise to and sustain conflict, and complicate peacebuilding." The book argues that "existing state-level focus tends to ignore the role of regional linkages in permitting and sustaining conflict and as obstacles to transformation." Furthermore that, "the focus on the dynamics of conflict in states of the developing world tends to artificially distance the outside, predominantly "Western" world from their genesis and evolution ..." (taken from introduction)

In recent decades, the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) has experienced more frequent and severe conflicts than in any other region of the world, exacting a devastating human toll. The region now faces unprecedented challenges, including the emergence of violent non-state actors, significant destruction, and a refugee crisis bigger than any since World War II. This paper raises awareness of the economic costs of conflicts on the countries directly involved and on their neighbors. It argues that appropriate macroeconomic policies can help mitigate the impact of conflicts in the short term, and that fostering higher and more inclusive growth can help address some of the root causes of conflicts over the long term. The paper also highlights the crucial role of external partners, including the IMF, in helping MENA countries tackle these challenges.

The Handbook on the Economics of Conflict conveys how economics can contribute to the understanding of conflict in its various dimensions embracing world wars, regional conflicts, terrorism and the role of peacekeeping in conflict prevention. The economics of conflict is a relatively new branch of the discipline of economics. Conflict provides opportunities for applying game theory involving strategic behaviour, interactions and interdependence betweenadversaries. The Handbook demonstrates that conflict and its prevention is costly; it considers new dimensions such as ethnic cleansing, destructive power, terrorism, corruption, the impact of new technology, peacekeeping, the role of economists in defence ministries and the use of privatecontractors in conflict.

Five years into the ongoing and tragic conflict, the paper analyzes how Syria’s economy and its people have been affected and outlines the challenges in rebuilding the economy. With extreme limitations on information, the findings of the paper are subject to an extraordinary degree of uncertainty. The key messages are: (1) that the devastating civil war has set the country back decades in terms of economic, social and human development. Syria’s GDP today is less than half of what it was before the war started and it could take two decades or more for Syria to return to its pre-conflict GDP levels; and that (2) while reconstructing damaged physical infrastructure will be a monumental task, rebuilding Syria’s human and social capital will be an even greater and lasting challenge.