Why am I passionate about this?

I'm Associate Professor of Economics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, USA. My expertise is in conflict, war, and peace economics. I'm deeply motivated to understand the broader impacts of violent conflicts in low-income countries with the hope that doing so will pave the way for us to live in a more harmonious world. Recently, I've been interested in economics of cultural heritage destruction during violent conflicts. My aim is to understand patterns of heritage destruction in the past such that we can incorporate heritage destruction in atrocity forecasting models of today. I'm just as passionate to teach what I have learned over the years and what I'm curious to explore in the future.


I wrote

The Economics of Conflict and Peace: History and Applications

By Shikha Basnet Silwal, Charles H. Anderton, Jurgen Brauer , Christopher J. Coyne , J. Paul Dunne

Book cover of The Economics of Conflict and Peace: History and Applications

What is my book about?

Written for an audience of students, general readers, and economists alike, this Element is a primer on the field ofā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Principles of Conflict Economics: The Political Economy of War, Terrorism, Genocide, and Peace

Shikha Basnet Silwal Why did I love this book?

I recommend this book because, to me, the book is like a pair of glasses that I put on whenever I want to see the world a little more clearly.

For others, it has something to offer to anyone who is looking to learn to analytically study conflict, war, and peace. Donā€™t know ā€œenoughā€ economics to study these topics analytically? No problem. Read Part II of the book. Donā€™t know ā€œenoughā€ about conflict to apply your knowledge of economics to those topics? Part III of the book has you covered.

Enough of conflict, can we learn more about peace, you say? The last part of the book is for you. Together, the book is as an indispensable resource for professors, students, policymakers, and an educated general audience, alike.

By Charles H. Anderton, John R. Carter,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Principles of Conflict Economics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Conflict economics contributes to an understanding of violent conflict and peace in two important ways. First, it applies economic concepts and models to help one understand diverse conflict activities such as war, terrorism, genocide, and peace. Second, it treats coercive appropriation as a fundamental economic activity, joining production and exchange as a means of wealth acquisition. In the second edition of their book Principles of Conflict Economics, Anderton and Carter provide comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of the key themes and principles of conflict economics. Along with new scholarship on well-established areas such as war, terrorism and alliances and under-researched areas includingā€¦


Book cover of The Logic of Violence in Civil War

Shikha Basnet Silwal Why did I love this book?

I bought Kalyvasā€™s book back in 2009 as a doctoral student looking to understand the social science literature on civil war violence and finished reading it only in 2023 as an associate professor interested in studying target choice for a class I was teaching.

Though singularly focused on civil wars, the book goes deep in constructing theoretical arguments to support the premise of the book and travels broad in applying the models across various civil wars. It teaches readers to look beneath the surface to understand what we observe on the outside.

It is a great resource for those looking for good examples of how to develop a theoretical model. Finally, I also highly recommend this book to graduate students looking for research ideas.

By Stathis N. Kalyvas,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Logic of Violence in Civil War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection ofā€¦


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Book cover of I Am Taurus

I Am Taurus by Stephen Palmer,

The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.

Each of the sections is written fromā€¦

Book cover of The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War

Shikha Basnet Silwal Why did I love this book?

I recommend this book because it is in part a historical account of wartime architecture destruction, in part a compilation of academic literature on causes and consequences of architecture destruction, and in part a cautionary note on post-war reconstruction of public memory.

With a detailed and vivid description of cultural destruction, Bevan weaves a latticework of examples that helps readers find common threads across seemingly different events.

Whether a war is emergent, on-folding, or terminated, such as the war in Ukraine, Israel-Hamas war, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the book serves as a roadmap that helps us understand the inextricable link between people and their culture and shows how architectural destruction is most visible as ā€˜wars greatest pictureā€™ but also least observed as wars greatest fatality.

By Robert Bevan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Destruction of Memory as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A decimated Shiite shrine in Iraq. The smoking World Trade Center site. The scorched cityscape of 1945 Dresden. Among the most indelible scars left by war is the destroyed landscapes, and such architectural devastation damages far more than mere buildings. Robert Bevan argues here"that shattered buildings are not merely "collateral damage," but rather calculated acts of cultural annihilation.From Hitler's Kristallnacht to the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in the Iraq War, Bevan deftly sifts through military campaigns and their tactics throughout history, and analyzes the cultural impact and catastrophic consequences of architectural destruction. For Bevan, these actions are nothing lessā€¦


Book cover of The Moral Economy: Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens

Shikha Basnet Silwal Why did I love this book?

This book asks policymakers to look beyond incentives when designing policies.

Whether we are trying do something at a personal level, such as have our children do chores, or achieve something much bigger, such as combat obesity, designing appropriate incentives (carrots or sticks) is generally believed to help us achieve our goals.

Bowles warns us that this view assumes that incentives and morality are independent and that such view is faulty. Numerous experimental evidence attests to his argument. In its stead, he suggests shaping norms as a much more viable option.

When I presented these concepts in my economics elective this semester, one student commented that this was a ā€œparadigm shiftā€ in their understanding of economics; hence, the reason why I recommend this book.

By Samuel Bowles,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Moral Economy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why do policies and business practices that ignore the moral and generous side of human nature often fail?

Should the idea of economic man-the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus-determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding "no." Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may "crowd out" ethical and generous motives and thus backfire.

But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks theā€¦


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Book cover of Kurtz

Kurtz by John Lawson III,

Annie Kurtz joins the Marines, deploys to Afghanistan, and has to make a split-second decision. She can follow her orders. Or she can follow her conscience. Nick Willard is a journalist who has pined for Annie since they were in prep school together. While doing his job, he discovers whatā€¦

Book cover of Micromotives and Macrobehavior

Shikha Basnet Silwal Why did I love this book?

In this book we learn that our actions are shaped by that of others or by our expectation of what others will do.

If, for example, a white neighbor leaves the neighborhood upon seeing a minority family move in, other white neighbors are likely to follow suit if they expect more white neighbors to move out and more minorities to move in. If a critical mass of white neighbors adopts this behavior, the result is a segregated neighborhood.

Applied this idea to the study of mass atrocities, we understand mass participation in mass atrocities as not a result of moral failure, but a social phenomenon driven by imitating nature and belonging need of the humankind. This understanding humanizes the mass perpetrators of an atrocity and opens space for reconciliation.

By Thomas C. Schelling,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Micromotives and Macrobehavior as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Schelling here offers an early analysis of 'tipping' in social situations involving a large number of individuals." -official citation for the 2005 Nobel Prize

Micromotives and Macrobehavior was originally published over twenty-five years ago, yet the stories it tells feel just as fresh today. And the subject of these stories-how small and seemingly meaningless decisions and actions by individuals often lead to significant unintended consequences for a large group-is more important than ever. In one famous example, Thomas C. Schelling shows that a slight-but-not-malicious preference to have neighbors of the same race eventually leads to completely segregated populations.

The updatedā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

The Economics of Conflict and Peace: History and Applications

By Shikha Basnet Silwal, Charles H. Anderton, Jurgen Brauer , Christopher J. Coyne , J. Paul Dunne

Book cover of The Economics of Conflict and Peace: History and Applications

What is my book about?

Written for an audience of students, general readers, and economists alike, this Element is a primer on the field of the economics of conflict and peace. It offers a systematic, and detailed overview ā€“ even if in broad strokes ā€“ of the fieldā€™s orthodox and heterodox history of thought and current theories and evidence. The authors view this Element as a baseline account on which to build a future, separate, and more fully developed work on the economics of peace, economic growth, and human development. Altogether, the Element contextualizes the field of conflict and peace economics, outlines its history of thought, highlights examples of current theoretical and empirical scholarship in the field, and maps trajectories for further research.

Book cover of Principles of Conflict Economics: The Political Economy of War, Terrorism, Genocide, and Peace
Book cover of The Logic of Violence in Civil War
Book cover of The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War

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