Here’s a basic question: What has been the cost of the Iraq war for Iraq? As it turns out, it’s not easy to find an economist who can provide an answer. Although several studies have dealt with the war’s cost to Americans, there has been no comparable work addressing the cost to Iraqis. Of course, the loss of human life has always been evident. Recently, the United Nations estimated that 100 Iraqis were dying each day, on average, as a result of the war. Others have put the number much higher. A recent study in The Lancet, the British medical journal, placed the average daily figure at about 500, amounting to the loss of 2 percent of Iraq’s population since the invasion in March 2003. The economic cost has been less visible. Published information on the subject is very limited, although one economist, Colin Rowat, has made some preliminary calculations using the best sources available. Professor Rowat, a specialist on the Iraqi economy at the University of Birmingham in Britain, relied mainly on data from the International Monetary Fund to estimate the war’s overall effect on the Iraqi economy. His calculations are a work in progress, but what […]