Terrorism and education: Evidence from instrumental variables estimators
Terrorism and education: Evidence from instrumental variables estimators
This paper estimates the effect of exposure to terrorist violence on education. Since terrorists may choose targets endogenously, we construct a set of novel instruments. To that end, we leverage exogenous variation from a local terrorist group's revenues and its affiliation with al-Qaeda. Across several Kenyan datasets, we find that attacks suppress school enrolment more than predicted by difference-in-differences-type estimators. This indicates that terrorists target areas experiencing unobserved, positive shocks. Evidence suggests fears and concerns as mechanisms of impact, rather than educational supply.
906-925
Alfano, Marco
0df2fd10-8c2e-444f-9ec2-5c5e74c1a99e
Goerlach, Joseph-Simon
aaf42743-f864-4d06-bef6-0d6b51c32df3
9 May 2024
Alfano, Marco
0df2fd10-8c2e-444f-9ec2-5c5e74c1a99e
Goerlach, Joseph-Simon
aaf42743-f864-4d06-bef6-0d6b51c32df3
Alfano, Marco and Goerlach, Joseph-Simon
(2024)
Terrorism and education: Evidence from instrumental variables estimators.
Journal of Applied Econometrics, 39 (5), .
(doi:10.1002/jae.3058).
Abstract
This paper estimates the effect of exposure to terrorist violence on education. Since terrorists may choose targets endogenously, we construct a set of novel instruments. To that end, we leverage exogenous variation from a local terrorist group's revenues and its affiliation with al-Qaeda. Across several Kenyan datasets, we find that attacks suppress school enrolment more than predicted by difference-in-differences-type estimators. This indicates that terrorists target areas experiencing unobserved, positive shocks. Evidence suggests fears and concerns as mechanisms of impact, rather than educational supply.
This record has no associated files available for download.
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 22 January 2024
Published date: 9 May 2024
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 507551
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/507551
ISSN: 0883-7252
PURE UUID: b8d164a2-0b33-4cca-b730-0f4489ff1696
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 11 Dec 2025 17:54
Last modified: 13 Dec 2025 03:10
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Marco Alfano
Author:
Joseph-Simon Goerlach
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics