30 September 2025, 11:00 CET
Seminar Room 1.103
Artem Lomakin
Independent Researcher (ACONA fellow 2024/2025)
The war in Ukraine has precipitated a polycrisis characterized by armed conflict, a humanitarian emergency, and economic instability. This paper analyzes how these intersecting
crises have reduced incomes and deteriorated living standards at the household level, drawing on micro-level quantitative data from surveys and official statistics. We find that the vast majority of Ukrainian households have suffered significant income losses since the invasion, driving a sharp rise in poverty and food insecurity. National poverty rates climbed from 5.5% before the war to over 24% in 2022, erasing years of development gains (World Bank Document). Employment has collapsed in war-affected areas, and coping strategies such as cutting food consumption, drawing down savings, and reliance on aid are widespread. Gender disparities are evident: women have experienced disproportionate economic burdens, comprising nearly three-quarters of the unemployed (TRENDS Research & Advisory - Shattered Lives: The Impact of the Ukraine Conflict on Women and Girls’ Displacement, Healthcare, and Economic Security), and female-headed households and displaced women face heightened vulnerabilities. The analysis highlights how the war’s compounding crises – physical destruction, mass displacement, and macroeconomic upheaval – have combined to undermine livelihoods. We conclude with a discussion of policy responses, noting that expanded social protection and humanitarian assistance have partly mitigated the fallout, while underscoring the need for sustained support for vulnerable groups as Ukraine navigates this protracted emergency.
Sara Ansari
Brown University
This paper proposes a theoretical framework to understand the challenges of conducting mixed method, causally-identified research in extremely fragile, conflict-affected settings. We draw on a case study from Darfur to present a set of tools and approaches to overcome these challenges. In both academic and policy circles, demand exceeds supply for rigorous research with project-specific quantitative and qualitative data collected in low-capacity and data poor areas where conflicts are active or nearby. The paucity of research is particularly striking with respect to work that seeks to understand the effects of complex large scale interventions, such as those undertaken by multilateral organizations. Empirical methods exist to conduct such research, yet their application remains rare, even when compared with other contexts that present logistical challenges. We propose that this gap can be explained by the higher levels of uncertainty and the scarcity of information available to research teams. Both of these factors – greater uncertainty and limited information – are exacerbated by 1) the nature of fragile conflictaffected contexts and 2) the nature of projects funded and implemented by large multilateral organizations. Through the case of a research project investigating a large-scale UN-supported peacebuilding project in Darfur, we present a set of tools to overcome these challenges.
Robert Gonzalez
Georgia Institute of Technology
We provide evidence that mobile phone coverage lowers insurgent violence using two separate empirical designs in Afghanistan. First, we propose a novel regression discontinuity (RD) design for multiple, unknown cutoffs that uses signal strength as the forcing variable. We estimate signal strength for each cell of a 1X1 kilometer grid using a high-resolution radio wave propagation model. Second, we employ a differences-in-differences design leveraging the staggered rollout of cell towers for the largest operator in Afghanistan. Grid cells with just enough coverage report a 2.4 percentage point drop in all attacks, while districts experience a significant decrease in violence after the installation of a cell tower. We explore insurgent coordination and information sharing as possible mechanisms. We find weak evidence of spatial and temporal changes in the clustering of attacks following the installation of a tower in a district. However, we find evidence of coverage reducing violence near populated areas, primary roads, during morning hours, and a sharp increase in civilian call traffic preceding foiled attacks, all suggesting that information sharing is a key mechanism.