2.3. Why should costs of conflicts be calculated?

Many experts recognized that one of the least researched areas within economics is the economic downturn and the consequences war and conflict. However, in recent times this topic has attracted scholars and received more attention than ever. Scholars including Stiglitz and Bilmes (2008) have researched the cost of the Iraq war on the US, Bilmes (2013 together with Bruck et al. (2011) have analyzed the cost of German involvement in Afghanistan and recently Abadie and Gardeazabel (2003) have published an article on the cost of the Basque conflict (Smith, 2013).

In many cases, the objective of calculating the costs of conflict is to attempt to influence governments choices on whether to attend war or not. However, when the taken place, the purpose of these studies is in order to persuade governments to take action and cooperating with international forces to finish the war. If these calculations are created before a possible conflict, the costs and benefits might be presented as a method of preventing a country from going to war (Smith, 2013). Generally, there are three significant reasons behind why we must measure the costs of wars and conflicts. The very first reason it because conflict is a key cause of poverty and underdevelopment. Second, new working policies for reducing the economic costs of conflicts and wars can simply be developed if someone knows how economic activity is affected throughout a conflict. Third, to be able to form new policies to absolve or reduce conflict it is crucial to comprehend economic behavior and incentive over the conflict. Measuring the expenses really are a significant key to this process development of preventing or ending a conflict and better estimates of costs of different wars and conflicts are essential in order to produce approximations of the economic value of conflict prevention (Lindgren, 2014). Moreover, measuring the economic costs of a conflict is a better way of presenting data, which may might influence making decisions processes and thus as an example, before a potential conflict, calculating the costs and benefits will help in terms of a how much the nation should expand on military defense to be able to deter the conflict (Smith, 2013). Furthermore, additionally, it is significant to consider which groups are taking advantage of the conflict, such as weapon sellers and people who operate within the black market. It is in hope more and more knowledge concerning this field boosts the opportunity that more decisions are made in a way, which avoids and prevents conflicts that affect millions of people all over the world (Lindgren, 2014). Although, many scholars are critical towards this type of literature (Smith, 2013). it is vital to carry on further research, hoping that it will be acknowledged and beneficial for policy makers across the world. In a more detailed aspect, many began to ask this question, how a research study like this one possibly can have any kind of effect when it comes to changing people's mindset and preventing conflict and wars and as this is one of the central arguments sceptics it is very important to have some kind of interact with it. These studies demonstrate the appropriate and credible data in relation to diplomacy, which can be probably the most peaceful methods to attempt to have an effect on wars and conflict across the world. Moreover, currently many negotiations concerning reducing nuclear weapons are on top priority of the international arenas global issues agenda, and as author Hossein Askari wrote in one of his books “If the world can reduce nuclear warheads, why not conflicts and wars?” (Askari 2012: 21).