Civil conflict and educational achievement: The case of the Colombian secondary school exit examination

This paper examines the relationship between civil conflict and educational achievement in Colombia. We use multilevel analysis to deal adequately with the hierarchical structure of the data and an instrumental variables approach to tackle the possibility of bias associated with endogeneity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first effort to understand the relationship between civil conflict and educational achievement in exit examinations through the use of multilevel analysis. The results show that the relationship between the intensity of the conflict and performance on exit examinations is not as straightforward as it may seem at first glance.