PhD Candidate: Lin Yang
Dissertation Title: "Infrastructure, Conflict, and Health Impacts in South Asia"
Abstract: This dissertation consists of three chapters connected by a common theme: investigating key barriers to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by examining how violent conflict shapes development outcomes in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Using advanced applied microeconomics techniques—including difference-in-differences (DID), regression discontinuity design (RDD), and spatial analysis—each chapter explores the interaction of conflict with critical development dimensions such as infrastructure, health, and technology.
The first chapter analyzes the impact of large-scale infrastructure aid on political violence, focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Pakistan. While the relationship between aid and armed conflict has been widely studied, the effects of Chinese aid to developing countries remain less understood. Using an event study design on district-level violent conflict data in Pakistan from 2010 to 2020, this chapter finds that violent incidents decreased during and shortly after road construction along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). However, annual trends reveal increased volatility in violence in subsequent years, suggesting that the initial reduction in conflict is temporary. These findings show that large-scale, government-supported transportation projects, carried out under military protection, initially reduce conflict but return to previous levels over time. This chapter contributes the first rigorous evidence on the localized social impacts of BRI projects, a growing but understudied form of foreign aid, specifically addressing impacts on local violence.
The second chapter investigates how violent conflict affects healthcare demand in Afghanistan, with a focus on women and young children. Combining daily conflict data from ACLED and GTD with facility-level visit records from the 2018-2019 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS-VII), this chapter finds that conflict exposure significantly reduces healthcare utilization, particularly among female patients and mothers with young children. This analysis enhances understanding of healthcare-seeking behavior in conflict zones and highlights the disproportionate impact of violence on vulnerable populations’ access to essential services.
The third chapter examines whether mobile phone coverage reduces insurgent violence in Afghanistan. It introduces a novel regression discontinuity (RD) design for multiple, unknown cutoffs based on signal strength as the forcing variable and applied to high-resolution (1X1km) grid cells using a high-resolution radio wave propagation model. Additionally, a difference-in-differences strategy exploits the staggered rollout of cell towers by Afghanistan’s largest operator. While spatial and temporal clustering of attacks changes only modestly following tower installation, stronger effects are observed in populated areas, near primary roads, during morning hours, and when call traffic spikes
immediately before attacks—suggesting that improved information sharing via mobile networks is a key mechanism than insurgent coordination.
Together, these chapters provide new empirical evidence on how conflict interacts with infrastructure, health, and information access, offering policy-relevant insights for promoting sustainable development in conflict-affected regions. The findings contribute to several SDGs, including Goal 1 (No Poverty), Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-being), Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and Goal 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions).
Committee:
Olga Shemyakina (Co-Advisor), Associate Professor, School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Robert Gonzalez, (Co-Advisor), Associate Professor, School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Daniel Dench, Assistant Professor, School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Shatakshee Dhongde, Professor, School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Xiao Hui Tai, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of California, Davis
Date: June 13, 2025
Time: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM EST
Location: Old Civil Engineering Building Room 204 & Virtual (https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_MGZhYTZiZjQtOTMy…
Meeting ID: 296 331 533 863 6 Passcode: iC9PZ9kE)