How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia

How does past political violence impact subsequent development and practices, long beyond the life of the regime that perpetrated violence? Prior research focuses on physical destruction without much attention to weapons left behind in conflict zones. I contend that unexploded ordnance create direct and imminent threats to rural livelihoods. Individuals respond by shortening time horizons and avoiding investment in activities for which there is an immediate security cost but a distant return. Short-term adjustments in agricultural methods accumulate to long-term underdevelopment and poverty. In Cambodia, I find that the historic bombing of high-fertility land, where impact fuses hit soft ground and were more likely to fail, reduces contemporary household production and welfare. Counterintuitively, the most fertile land becomes the least productive. This reversal of fortune qualifies the presumption that post-war economies will eventually converge back to steady-state growth.

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