Ethnic conflicts, civil war, and economic growth : region‐level evidence from former Yugoslavia

Kešeljević, Aleksandar (author), Nikolić, Stefan (author), Spruk, Rok (author)

This paper studies the long‐term effects of the Yugoslav civil war (1987–1995) on subnational economic growth across 78 regions in five former Yugoslav republics from 1950 to 2015. We construct counterfactual growth trajectories using a robust region‐level donor pool from 32 conflict‐free countries. Applying a hybrid synthetic control and difference‐in‐differences approach, we find that the civil war inflicted significant regional per capita GDP losses estimated at 38 percent relative to the synthetic counterfactual, with substantial regional heterogeneity. The most war‐affected regions suffered prolonged and per- manent economic declines, while north‐western regions and capital cities experienced more transitory effects. Population displacement, ethnic fractionalization and polarization, and economic geography help explain cross‐regional variation in GDP losses. Our results are robust to extensive variety of specification tests, placebo analyses, and falsification exercises.

• Language: English
• Keywords: Yugoslavia, civil war, ethnic characteristics, economic growth, ethnic conflict, regions
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: In print
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2026
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-180359
• UDC: 332.1
• ISSN on article: 0022-4146
• DOI: 10.1111/jors.70055
• COBISS.SI-ID: 266749699
• Publication date in RUL: 06.03.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of regional science
• Shortened title: J. reg. sci.
• Publisher: Wiley
• ISSN: 0022-4146
• COBISS.SI-ID: 25785600

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Jugoslavija, državljanska vojna, etnične karakteristike, ekonomska rast