Not Just Empty Rhetoric: The Economic Cost of Warmongering in a Post-Conflict Environment

Abstract

The post-conflict literature is consistent in reporting that wars leave a painful and lasting legacy on those that experience it directly. This article aims to contribute to this broad body of literature by exploring how threats of possible new conflict affect the generation born after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our study relies on primary data collected through a controlled experiment amongst business students at three universities dominated by three different ethnicities across the country. The students were exposed to a tailored, yet fictional media report discussing the possibility of a new war. The outcomes from our Structural Equation Model reveal that the threat of a new conflict is associated with lower entrepreneurial intentions of business students and mediated by greater risk aversion. As a result, we provide evidence that the permanent warmongering in a post-conflict context, which is often a regular occurrence in such environments, cannot be dismissed as just empty rhetoric. Rather, it can potentially have severe economic consequences that might hamper economic development and prospects in the medium and long run.