Economic Research and Perspectives

Economic Research and Perspectives

The Impact of Human Capital on the Civil Wars Considering the Role of Democracy: A Panel Generalized Least Squares Approach

Authors
Mohammad Hassan Fotros 1
Morteza Ghorban Seresht 2
Ali Dalaei Milan 3
1 Member of scientific corpus of Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, I.R. of Iran
2 M.A in Economics, Bu-Ali Sina University
3 Ph.D. in Economics, Bu-Ali Sina University
Abstract
Over the past two hundred years, not only the process of democracy formation has not been uniform; but also it has been with different fluctuations, including internal and external wars and conflicts. Within the system of interactions between education and the occurrence of internal conflicts in a country, the question is whether increase in the level of democracy reduces the occurrence of internal conflict or not. This study uses a panel data with 11 periods (of five years), and 83 selected war-torn countries to examine the relationship between human capital and domestic war (conflict), taking into consideration the effectiveness of democracy in this relationship. To estimate the magnitude of relationships between variables, a panel generalized least squares method is applied. Results indicate a significant negative relationship among human capital, GDP, democracy, and internal conflict. In addition, with inclusion of the interactional variable (democracy multiplied by human capital) in the model, the results show a declining progressive negative effect of both democracy and human capital on the occurrence of conflicts.
Keywords
Democracy
Internal conflicts
Panel generalized least squares
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Economic Research and Perspectives
Volume 16, Issue 3
Autumn 2016
Pages 67-86