Beyond the Front Lines: Who Were the True Winners of the Iraq War?

Abstract

We study whether the US and UK invaded Iraq to gain access to oil resources. Our findings provide evidence that events decreasing conflict intensity lead to significantly positive abnormal returns for the US and UK oil companies. We find no evidence that the US and UK companies experience abnormal returns following events increasing conflict intensity. However, they significantly outperform all control groups following these events. Following the capture of Saddam Hussein, we find that the US and UK companies experience significantly greater long-term cumulative abnormal returns than the control group consisting of oil companies from all other countries. These results are, however, sensitive to changes in the control group composition.