ABSTRACT
Predominantly, the research work of academic economists involves to construct qualitative and quantitative models, hoping to confirm old, and/or to tease out new, general lessons from the particular events under study. As elsewhere, in the field of the economics of conflict, war, and peace, such theoretical and empirical models rely heavily on mathematical and statistical technique and, of course, on plenty of computing power. Often, that work is insightful indeed, as the theoretical and quantitative contributions to this volume attest, and I myself have written studies of that kind (see, e.g., Mohammed, 1992; Dunne and Mohammed, 1995). Much, and probably most, work of this kind, especially with respect to developing nations, remains at the macroeconomic level for lack of microeconomic field work. Yet it is at the microeconomic level that the cost of war affects people and their households most visibly.
