Conflict Has Its Price

I ran across an interesting news story this morning about how "conflict" has slowed Nepal's economic growth. It's a worthy story in its own right, but the story made me think of how conflict, in all of its various forms, hurts a community's economic chances. No community is perfect, but some, I believe, do a better job of preventing and overcoming conflict when it arises. How is your community doing in this regard? Might you be more successful as an economic developer if conflict was lessened in your area?

"Conflict has increasingly affected Nepal’s economic performance since 2001. Economic growth slowed to an average of 1.9% over the FY2002-04 period compared to 4.9% in the decade preceding that. More than 12,000 people have be killed, physical infrastructure has been destroyed, thousands of people have been displaced, economic disruptions have increased and development expenditures have decline sharply."

"The study was undertaken to measure the economic costs of the conflict, and the effect of declining development expenditures on Nepal’s economic development. This paper uses the Nepal Macro-model to measure it. The paper tries to establish the relationship between development expenditures and economic growth and contribute to improving the understanding of the costs of conflict in Nepal."

To read more, go here.