Conflict and roads in Colombia

Abstract

The civil unrest in Colombia has reported over 8 million victims. This paper studies the effect of transport infrastructure on the level of conflict at the municipality level. I confirm the main hypothesis that roads have a significant and negative effect on conflict, that is, better roads endowment discourage conflict in general. I also find that populated municipalities are the primary shelter for displaced. However, the agglomeration effects do not overshadow the road’s effect. I interpret these results as inter-regional roads increase the state capacity and shift the economic activity in the regions, the latter decreases the probability of participating in the conflict by either joining armed groups or being a victim. The role of roads is found to be robust to a long list of controls, different specifications, different estimation techniques, and potential bias from simultaneity and measurement error.