ABSTRACT
When the Dayton Peace Accords were signed in late 1995, the Bosnian economy lay literally in ruins. Nearly four years of war had taken a severe toll on an economy that had already been one of the weakest of Yugoslavia’s six republics. By war’s end, the country’s per capita GDP had fallen below $500 (some 20 percent of its pre-war level), unemployment had reached levels of 80-90 percent, while a similar percentage of the population was dependent on food aid for survival.1 The terrible human cost of the war – 250,000 dead and more than 2 million displaced – also had profound implications for post-war economic recovery, as it left much of the country’s human capital base in disarray.
