Presentation to the Belgian Entrepreneurship Research Day, 6 May 2013, Brussels, Belgium - Entrepreneurship and Violent Conflict: An Overview

This presentation provides an overview of a multi-year project into entrepreneurship and development, with a special focus on entrepreneurship, development and violent conflict. 

The impacts of war and civil conflict on broader acroeconomic outcomes have been studied in detail: direct costs in terms of destruction of infrastructure, capital, diverted (military) expenditure; and much higher indirect costs, such as disruption of markets, increase in risk and uncertainty. It reduces GDP and increases poverty. Violent conflict is bad for business and bad for entrepreneurship. Destroyed infrastructure, insecure property rights or falling consumer demand all increase transaction costs and the ease of doing business. It also diminishes productivity, increases the constraints underlying entrepreneurial decisions and hinders international entrepreneurship, which depends on reliable access to transport and logistical infrastructure that are often the first to be damaged in a war. However, the relationship between conflict and entrepreneurship, and small business in particular, is not well understood in the scientific literature, for various reasons. This project tried to fill this gap.

It is based on two special journal issues edited by Tilman Brück, Wim Naudé and Philip Verwimp:
– Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (2011, 24(2)),– Journal of Conflict Resolution (2013, 57(1)).

Maatsricht School of Management 2013

Maastricht School of Management is a leading provider of management education with worldwide presence. Our mission is to enhance the management capacity of professionals and organizations in and for emerging economies and developing countries with the objective to substantially contribute to the development of these societies