We study the effect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on various education outcomes for Palestinian high school students in the West Bank during the Second Intifada (2000–2006). Exploiting within-school variation in the number of conflict-related Palestinian fatalities during the academic year, we show that the conflict reduces the probability of passing the final exam, the total test score, and the probability of being admitted to university. The effect of conflict varies with the type and the timing of the violent events the student is exposed to and it is not significant for students in the upper tail of the test score distribution. We discuss various possible transmission mechanisms explaining our main result. Evidence suggests a role for both the conflict-induced deterioration of school infrastructures and the worsening in the student's psychological well-being due to direct exposure to violent events.

This article introduces a special issue on the micro-level dynamics of mass violent conflict. While most analyses of conflict typically adopt a regional, national or global perspective, often using country-level data, this special issue takes an explicit micro-level approach, focusing on the behaviour and welfare of individuals, households and groups or communities. At a fundamental level, conflict originates from individuals' behaviour and their repeated interactions with their surroundings, in other words, from its micro-foundations. A micro-level approach advances our understanding of conflict by its ability to account for individual and group heterogeneity within one country or one conflict. The contributors to this special issue investigate the nature of violence against civilians, the agency of civilians during conflict, the strategic interaction between civilians and armed actors, the consequences of displacement, the effectiveness of coping strategies and the impact of policy interventions. The core message from these articles is that in order to understand conflict dynamics and its effects on society, we have to take seriously the incentives and constraints shaping the interaction between the civilian population and the armed actors. The kind of interaction that develops, as well as the resulting conflict dynamics, depend on the type of conflict, the type of armed actors and the characteristics of the civilian population and its institutions.

In this article, we provide an introduction to the Special Issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution devoted to the impact of violent conflict on entrepreneurship in developing countries. First we note that there is insufficient attention in the literature on the impact of violent conflict on the firm or entrepreneur level. Then, after we define entrepreneurship and violent conflict, we provide a summary of the existing literature and give an overview of the contributions in this Special Issue. We conclude by noting policy implications and areas for further research.