Jump to content

Violent Conflict and Academic Research: Evidence from the 2014 Conflict in Ukraine

30.01.2024 14:00 CET Online Seminar Series of the Economics Dept.

Talk by Maksym Obrizan (Kyiv School of Economics) as part of the Research Seminar Series of the IOS Economics Department.

We estimate the effects of the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine on scientists and their research. We use a difference-in-differences event study framework to quantify the war's effects on research productivity, mobility, and collaborations. Using publication data from the SCOPUS database, we create a panel of authors affiliated with Ukrainian universities and research centers before and after the beginning of the intervention. Our treatment group includes researchers from the heavily impacted regions of Donbas and Crimea in 2012-2013, just prior to the start of the conflict. Our control group are scientists from other regions of Ukraine at this time who were not directly affected by the conflict. We find that publications for authors in the affected regions (Donbas/Crimea) declined compared to authors in other Ukrainian regions, particularly for men. We also show that co-authorship with Russian scientists increased in the affected regions after the onset of the conflict. By focusing on academics – key agents in the generation and diffusion of knowledge – our findings offer a unique perspective on labor market disruptions induced by war. Our results can be scaled up to approximate the cost of the full-scale Russian aggression in 2022, data for which will become available only in a few years.

Cookie settings

In addition to technically necessary cookies, this website also uses cookies whose purpose is to analyze website access or personalize your user experience. You can revoke your consent to their use at any time here. More information on the cookies used in detail and your right of revocation can be found in the privacy policy.
Name Usage Duration
privacylayerStatus Agreement Cookie hint1 year
Name Usage Duration
_pk_idMatomo13 months
_pk_refMatomo6 months
_pk_sesMatomo30 minutes
_pk_cvarMatomo30 minutes
_pk_hsrMatomo30 minutes
_pk_testcookieMatomoEnd of session
Name Usage Duration
vimeoVimeo video embedding
youtubeYoutube video embedding