Journal article
Together or separate? Post-conflict partition, ethnic homogenization, and the provision of public schooling
EL Swee
Journal of Public Economics | Published : 2015
Abstract
The partitioning of political jurisdictions is becoming an increasingly common component of agreements to end ethnic conflict, although its impact on post-conflict recovery remains unclear. This paper studies the effects of the partition which ended the 1992-1995 Bosnian War on the post-war provision of public schooling. I find that partitioned municipalities provide 58% more primary schools and 37% more teachers (per capita). Driven mainly by convergent preferences for ethnically oriented schools, however, this arrangement delivers distributional consequences: in partitioned municipalities, ethnic majority children are more likely to complete primary schooling, while for ethnic minority chi..
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Funding Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the provision of restricted-use data by the Bosnian Federal Office of Statistics and the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics. I also thank the Ministry of Education and Science (Sarajevo), the OSCE, and the UNHCR for their hospitality and assistance during my stay in Sarajevo. Mirza Besirovic provided excellent research assistance. Financial support by the Centre for International Studies and the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto is kindly acknowledged. Dwayne Benjamin, Gustavo Bobonis, Leah Brooks, Michela Cella, Ken Jackson, Gianmarco Leon, and participants at Adelaide, ANU, Auckland, Calgary, Dalhousie, Deakin, Georgia Tech, Melbourne, Monash, National Taiwan University, Singapore Management University, Toronto, NEUDC, PacDev, and the Political Economics Conference, provided helpful comments. Finally, I am grateful to the editor, Francesco Trebbi, and three anonymous referees, for suggestions that substantially improved the paper. All remaining errors are mine.