2011. “The Long-Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam

Abstract: We investigate the impact of U.S. bombing on later economic development in Vietnam. The Vietnam War featured the most intense bombing campaign in military history. We use a unique U.S. military dataset containing bombing intensity at the district level (N=585). We compare the heavily bombed districts to other districts, controlling for baseline demographic characteristics and district geographic factors. U.S. bombing does not have a statistically significant impact on long-run population density, poverty rates, infrastructure, or literacy in the 1990s. This finding is consistent with the view that institutions and geography are more important than initial stocks of physical and human capital for long run economic growth