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Essays on Conflicts and Human Capital Accumulation
Kovač, Dejan ; Filer, Randall (advisor) ; Manacorda, Marco (referee) ; Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude (referee)
vi Abstract In the first chapter of the dissertation, parental mortality is associated with a range of negative child outcomes. This paper studies the effect of paternal mortality on children's health and schooling outcomes using the universe of veterans' children born in Croatia, and all of the paternal deaths and injuries resulting from the 1991-1995 Croatian-Serbian war. Using linked administrative data, I find large negative effects of paternal death on high-school GPA, school absences, behaviour problems, and hospitalisations. I address potentially non-random selection into paternal death by using within-military unit differences in the extent of injury or death, essentially assuming that the members of a military unit all had similar probabilities of being killed or injured because they fought in the same battles. I am also able to shed light on an important mechanism underlying the estimated effects. Surviving spouses of those killed or injured were well compensated, so that the death of a father did not have a negative effect on household incomes. I find that a death or injury that occurred during the in-utero period has much larger effects than a death or injury in early childhood, suggesting that much of the negative effect is due to maternal stress In the second chapter, we answer the following...
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What's in a name in a war
Jurajda, Štěpán ; Kovač, Dejan
We propose a novel empirical strategy for identifying and studying nationalism using name choices. We Örst show that having been given a Örst name that is synonymous with the leader(s) of the fascist Croatian state during World War II predicts volunteering for army service in the 1991-1995 Croatian war of independence and dying during the conáict. Next, we use the universe of Croatian birth certiÖcates and the information about nationalism conveyed by Örst names to contrast the evolution of nationalism and its intergenerational transmission across locations a§ected by extreme war-related experiences. Our evidence suggests that in ex-Yugoslav Croatia, nationalism was on a continuous rise starting in the 1970s, that its rise was curbed in areas where concentration camps were located during WWII, and that nationalist fathers consider the nationalism-transmission trade-o§ between within-family and society-wide transmission channels suggested by Bisin and Verdier (2001).
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Identifying flip floppers: changing attitudes towards suicide bombing in the Middle East
Malečková, Jitka ; Kovač, Dejan
Existing literature on attitudes towards terrorism is mainly based on a cross sectional analysis of data, providing insights in the differences among countries. This paper examines changes in public opinion on terrorism over time, utilizing the PEW Survey data on at titudes towards suicide bombing in the Middle East (specifically Egypt and Pakistan) from 2004 to 2011. Give n the lack of panel data, it uses the Markov chain methodology to compare changes in the distribution of people who approve of terrorism in order to identify specific demograp hic groups within a country that have a higher probability of switching between approval and disapproval of suicide bombing. Predicting future evolutio n of terror ism approval helps to identify outliers in the data. Year to year country level changes in approval of terrorism are divided into different subgroups to investigate whether the change is on aggregate level for the whole country or whether specific demograp hic groups are triggering the changes. The results of this research can inform policies aimed at reducing the rates of terrorism approval among specific demographic groups.
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