A Discrete Choice Approach to Estimating Armed Conflicts’ Casualties: Revisiting the Numbers of a ‘Truth Commission’

I discuss the application of capture-recapture methods to estimating thetotal number of deaths in armed conflicts, and propose an alternative method based ona trivariate discrete choice model. Data come from the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (TRC) of Peru, around 25000 deaths, classified by three sources of information, strata, and perpetrator: the State and the Shining Path. In these datamany killings have been only documented by one source, which makes a projection ofkillings unfeasible . TRC consultants Ball et al. (2003) tried to overcome this problemby means of a ‘residual estimation,’ consisting of merging data for different perpetrators.I show theoretically and empirically that this method over-estimates the numberof deaths. Using a conditional trivariate Probit I estimate the total number of deaths inaround 28000, 60% by the State, 40% by the Shining Path. This number is substantially lower and has a different composition than the around 69000 deaths, 30% by the State,46% by the Shining Path, and 24% by ‘other perpetrators,’ calculated by Ball et al