TY - JOUR T1 - Obstacles on the Road to School: The Impacts of Mobility Restrictions on Educational Performance JF - Journal of Human Resources JO - J Hum Resour DO - 10.3368/jhr.0920-11166R2 SP - 0920-11166R2 AU - Sami Miaari AU - Ines Lee Y1 - 2021/10/13 UR - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2021/10/07/jhr.0920-11166R2.abstract N2 - Many students face various obstacles when going to school, including poor physical infrastructure and exposure to conflict. This paper investigates the costs of conflict-induced substandard infrastructure in terms of educational performance. We focus on students in the West Bank over 2000-2006 during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This conflict is characterized by a system of mobility restrictions enforced through physical barriers such as checkpoints, which increase commuting costs and the likelihood of encounters with security forces. We find that the introduction of checkpoints near a school reduces the probability of passing the final high school exam by 1 percentage point and the overall score by 0.04 standard deviations. Direct encounters with checkpoints have strong negative effects on performance, suggesting that time loss due to delays or the psychological impact of encountering security personnel may be important mechanisms. ER -