Fighting Fire with Aid: Development Assistance as Counterinsurency Tool. Evidence for Colombia

I study the causal effect of the foreign aid for development assistance ¿implemented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)¿ on the intensity of municipality-level armed conflict in Colombia, for the period 2009-2013. To address potential endogeneity biases, I use a Bartik-like instrument which exploits the spatial persistence of aid from USAID in Colombia. Specifically, I instrument foreign aid with the interaction between the United States GDP and municipality-level intent-to-treat indicators for the Malaria Eradication Campaigns (circa 1957). The results point out that foreign aid reduces the insurgency associated with left-wing guerrillas, especially FARC. However, foreign aid does not affect the violence associated with criminal gangs from right-wing paramilitary origins (BACRIM). I provide both quantitative and anecdotic evidence on two potential mechanisms behind my results: (i) Development programs raise the opportunity cost of fighting and; (ii) foreign aid improves the trust, and the information flows between civilians and the government. Finally, I provide empirical evidence that casts doubt on two alternative channels whose predictions cannot be reconciled with the results: (i) that foreign aid increases the potentially- looted rents by the insurgents and; (ii) that development programs rise targeted assassinations committed by insurgents to sabotage and reestablish bargaining power.

• Autores: Sánchez Cuevas, Edgar H.
• Tipo de recurso: Work document
• Fecha de publicación: 2018
• Institución: Universidad de los Andes
• Repositorio: Séneca: repositorio Uniandes
• Idioma: spa
• OAI Identifier: oai:repositorio.uniandes.edu.co:1992/41029
• Acceso en línea: http://hdl.handle.net/1992/41029
• Palabra clave: Armed conflict; Aid effectiveness; Insurgency; D74, F35, O54, O19, O12
• Rights: openAccess
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/