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During protracted displacement, women and girls often face serious gender-specific challenges and vulnerabilities, including adverse norms and institutional barriers. Using survey data from 18,533 displaced and non-displaced individuals in El Fasher, Sudan, we document that livelihoods are significantly shaped by a strong and complex intersectionality between long-term displacement and gender. IDP women work more (including paid labour, on- and off-farm self-employment) than non-IDP women but are poorer, on average. For men, there is no such difference in employment between IDPs and non-IDPs. These outcomes are the result of the 'double burden of female protracted displacement'. First, norms and institutions at the destination create access barriers to decent employment (due to women's displacement status). Second, norms and institutions at the place of origin create endowment barriers to decent employment (due to their gender). The double burden is strongest for older displaced women. By contrast, protracted displacement can be an (educational) opportunity for girls who grow up in displacement. Future policies should address the challenges stemming from the intersectionality of gender and protracted displacement by reducing past and contemporary institutional barriers and market asymmetries facing IDP women and by targeting the particular vulnerabilities older IDP women carry, enabling better education and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Displacement has increased continuously over the last 12 years and the number of forcibly displaced persons has reached an unprecedented level. More than half of all forcibly displaced persons are girls or women; yet very little is known about how gender intersects the behavior and welfare of forced displacement. This special issue focuses specifically on the gender dimensions of forced displacement. We make both topical and methodological contributions to knowledge about gender norms, livelihoods, multi-dimensional and income poverty, and gender-based violence and discuss the implications of our findings for future research, policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food systems in many countries are experiencing a shift from traditional foods toward processed foods high in sugar, fat and salt, but low in dietary fiber and micronutrients. There is an urgent need to better understand drivers of changing food behavior, particularly for lower-income countries. This study analyzes drivers of food choice among children and parents in rural Nepal. It uses qualitative data collected through key informant interviews and focus group discussions with school children, parents and teachers. The study reveals substantial changes in food behavior during the past decade with increased consumption of rice, meat, and highly processed snack foods while an increased consumption of fruit and vegetables is not evident. It identifies cash availability is the main driver of increased rice, meat and snack food consumption. The second driver is the 2015 Nepal earthquake, which accelerated the transition from homegrown food to purchased food as people got habituated to eating more meat and snack foods while reconstruction tripled local wages and changed the food environment. This shows how humanitarian assistance in the wake of extreme shocks can unintentionally contribute to unhealthy eating habits. An integrated school and home garden intervention appears to contribute to healthier diets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective social protection is increasingly as essential to supporting affected populations in situations of protracted instability and displacement. Despite the growing use of social protection in these settings, there is comparatively little rigorous research on what works, for whom, and why. This special issue contributes by adding seven high-quality studies that raise substantially our understanding of the role of social protection in fragile contexts and in settings of forced displacement and migration. Together, these studies fill knowledge gaps, help support informed decision-making by policy-makers and practitioners, and demonstrate that impact evaluation and the analysis of social protection in challenging humanitarian settings are possible. The studies provide evidence that design choices in implementation, such as which population to target, choice of transfer modality or which messages are delivered with programmes, can make a substantial difference in the realisation of positive benefits among vulnerable populations. Furthermore, the findings of the studies underline the relevance of tailoring programme components to populations, which may benefit more or less from traditional programme implementation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent strand of aid programming aims to develop household assets by removing the stresses associated with meeting basic nutritional needs. In this study, the authors posit that such nutrition-sensitive programmes can reduce malnourishment by encouraging further investment in diet. To test this hypothesis, they analyse the World Food Programme's (WFP) Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO), in Niger, a conflict-affected, low-income country with entrenched food insecurity. Under the PRRO, a household falls into one of three groups at end line: receiving no assistance, receiving nutrition-specific assistance, or receiving nutrition-specific assistance and nutrition-sensitive food for assets-based programming. If provided alone, food aid has no nutritional impact relative to receiving no assistance. However, the study observes pronounced positive effects if food aid is paired with assets-based programming. The authors conclude, first, that certain forms of food aid function well in complex, insecure environments; second, that assets-based programmes deliver positive nutritional spillovers; and, third, that there are theoretical grounds to believe that assets-based nutrition-sensitive programmes interact positively with nutrition-specific programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year billions of US-dollars of humanitarian assistance are mobilised in response to man-made emergencies and natural disasters. Yet, rigorous evidence for how best to intervene remains scant. This dearth reflects that rigorous impact evaluations of humanitarian assistance pose major methodological, practical and ethical challenges. While theory-based impact evaluations can crucially inform humanitarian programming, popular methods, such as orthodox RCTs, are less suitable. Instead, factorial designs and quasi-experimental designs can be ethical and robust, answering questions about how to improve the delivery of assistance. We argue that it helps to be prepared, planning impact evaluations before the onset of emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the distributive impacts of internal violent conflicts, in contrast to previous literature which has focused on the effects of inequality on conflict. We use cross-country panel data for the time period 1960–2014 to estimate war-related changes in income inequality. Our results indicate rising levels of inequality during war and especially in the early period of post-war reconstruction. The return of inequality to pre-war levels may take up to four decades after the end of conflict. However, we find that this rise in income inequality is not permanent. While inequality peaks around 5 years after the end of a conflict, it declines again to pre-war levels within the end of the first post-war period. Lagged effects of conflict and only subsequent adjustments of redistributive policies in the period of post-war reconstruction seem to be valid explanations for these patterns of inequality. A series of alternative specifications confirms the main findings of the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the economic impact of violent conflicts, reallocation of resources, and the economic impact of the Darfur conflict.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one on the use of key concepts of economic analysis as employed in security economics, threat perceptions and a quantified taxonomy of recent terrorism research.

This paper defines the global economic costs of conflict and suggests two key criteria, namely comprehensiveness and consistency, which are necessary for a valid calculation of such costs. A critical review of the literature reveals that most studies focus on national income losses, using counterfactual regression models, finding a negative impact on growth both for conflict countries themselves and for their neighbors. However, the debate is quite fragmented and the literature fails to combine these insights in a comprehensive and consistent manner. Furthermore, there is little work thus far on integrating aggregate and micro-level estimates of the costs of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both crime and terrorism impose costs onto society through the channels of fear and worry. Identifying and targeting groups that are especially affected by worries might be one way to reduce the total costs of these two types of insecurity. However, compared with the drivers of the fear of crime, the determinants of concerns regarding global terrorism are less well known. Using nationally representative survey data, we analyse and compare the individual determinants of concern about global terrorism and crime. We show that worries about terrorism are driven by similar determinants as those about crime, which could have important policy implications. We, furthermore, provide an insight into the structure of the determinants of concerns regarding other public and private goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how mass violent conflict and the legacy of conflict affect households in developing countries. It does so by pointing out how violent conflict impairs a household's core functions, its boundaries, its choice of coping strategies and its well-being. The paper contributes to the literature on the economics of conflict, reconstruction and vulnerability in three ways. First, it addresses explicitly the level of analysis in the context of conflict by contrasting strengths and weaknesses of a unitary approach to the household and extending it to intra-household and group issues. Second, it identifies important research gaps in this field. Third, it highlights the economic situation of war widows in conflict-affected countries and discusses a case study of widows of the Rwandan genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the determinants of household work contracted in the German shadow economy. The German socio-economic household panel, which enumerates casual domestic employment, is used to estimate the demand for such household work. The regressors include regional wage rates, household income and several control variables for household composition. It is found that the demand for household work in the shadow economy is very income elastic. This suggests that targeted wage subsidies, linked to household work agencies, would be very effective in raising the legal demand for domestic help. A wage subsidy of 50% of wage costs could thus establish up to 500  000 new jobs for previously unemployed or non-working low skilled workers. The net fiscal costs of such a scheme are about 6.200 Euro per full-time job. In addition, society benefits from more law enforcement and from a raised female labour supply, especially by highly qualified mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses public policy choices in the security economy from an economic perspective. It discusses the role of public goods for national and global security and identifies the importance of the first‐ and second‐order indirect effects of insecurity on economic activity, which include the behavioural responses of agents and the government to security measures, akin to such effects in insurance economics. Furthermore, key public policy trade‐offs are outlined, in particular between security and efficiency, globalisation, equity and freedom. The analysis identifies suitable policy options for raising security in the national and international contexts and in view of these trade‐offs. A balance between market and non‐market instruments in achieving security should be aimed for in order to minimise the adverse effects of aiming for higher security. In addition, the public good nature of security implies that international coordination of security policies is important, despite this process being fraught with enforcement problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]