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Replication Data for: How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: How War Changes Land: Soil Fertility, Unexploded Bombs, and the Underdevelopment of Cambodia
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TUSXIG
 
Creator Lin, Erin
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description How does past political violence impact subsequent development and practices, long beyond the life of the regime that perpetrated violence? Prior research focuses on physical destruction without much attention to weapons left behind in conflict zones. I contend that unexploded ordnance create direct and imminent threats to rural livelihoods. Individuals respond by shortening time horizons and avoiding investment in activities for which there is an immediate security cost but a distant return. Short-term adjustments in agricultural methods accumulate to long-term underdevelopment and poverty. In Cambodia, I find that the historic bombing of high-fertility land, where impact fuses hit soft ground and were more likely to fail, reduces contemporary household production and welfare. Counterintuitively, the most fertile land becomes the least productive. This reversal of fortune qualifies the presumption that post-war economies will eventually converge back to steady-state growth.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Political violence
 
Contributor Lin, Erin
 
Source Cambodia Agriculture and Research Development Institute (CARDI)'s map of soil fertility. Available on Open Development Cambodia's online database (accessed 8/25/2020): https://data.opendevelopmentcambodia.net/en/dataset/map-soil-fertility-map-2003



Map of Khmer Rouge irrigation channels. Himel, Jeffrey. "Grand Delusion: Khmer Rouge Irrigation Development in Cambodia." Documentation Center of Cambodia. Text available online (https://cityofwater.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/khmer-rouge-irrigation-development-in-cambodia.pdf). Map available online (https://cityofwater.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/khmer-rouge-canals/). Last accessed 31 August 2020.


Restricted Data

Cambodia Socioeconomic Survey (CSES), 2012 from the National Institute of Statistics, Ministry of Planning, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Data access provided by Princeton University, Data and Statistical Service's Data Catalog: https://dss.princeton.edu/catalog/resource1825. Access provided to Princeton faculty, students and staff. Contact Economics Librarian Bobray Bordelon (bordelon@princeton.edu) for more information. The survey can also be purchased directly from the National Institute of Statistics for research purposes. Please contact Information and Communications Technology Director Lundy Saint (lundysaint@yahoo.com) for details.



US Army maps of Cambodia : 1:50,000, owned by Land Info Worldwide Mapping. Data access provided by Princeton University, GIS and Digital Map Center: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9583732. Contact Wangyal Shawa (shawatw@princeton.edu) to request in-person access.



US Air Force sorties over Cambodia, from Cambodian Genocide Program Geographic Database. Data access provided by Yale University, Genocide Studies Program: gsp.yale.edu. Researchers interested in analyzing the bombing data should directly contact the Genocide Studies Program (P.O. Box 208206; New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8206).