Economic Consequences of Conflict: The Rise of Iraq's Informal Economy

Abstract

Iraq's economy has undergone a number of profound changes over the last several decades, many of which have had significant implications for the manner in which the country's informal economy has evolved. The statist, heavy-handed economic policies of the Ba'athist government concentrated much of Iraq's productive capacity in nationalized factors, which degraded under the sanctions regime of the 1990s, when both industrial and agricultural production faltered for lack of inputs...