TY  - JOUR
AU  - Miguel,Edward
AU  - Roland,Gerard
TI  - The Long Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11954
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11954
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11954.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward Miguel
Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
530 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel: 510/642-7162
Fax: 510/642-6615
E-Mail: emiguel@econ.berkeley.edu

Gerard Roland
UC Berkeley
Department of Economics
627 Evans Hall #3880
Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
Tel: 510-642-4321
Fax: 510-642-6615
E-Mail: groland@econ.berkeley.edu
AB  - We investigate the impact of U.S. bombing on later economic development in Vietnam. The Vietnam War featured the most intense bombing campaign in military history and had massive humanitarian costs. We use a unique U.S. military dataset containing bombing intensity at the district level (N=584). We compare the heavily bombed districts to other districts controlling for baseline demographic characteristics and district geographic factors, and use an instrumental variable approach exploiting distance to the 17th parallel demilitarized zone. U.S. bombing does not have a robust negative impact on poverty rates, consumption levels, infrastructure, literacy or population density through 2002. This finding suggests that local recovery from war damage can be rapid under certain conditions, although further work is needed to establish the generality of the finding in other settings.
ER  -