We develop a theory of interstate conflict in which the degree of genealogical relatedness between populations has a positive effect on their conflict propensities because more closely related populations, on average, tend to interact more and develop more disputes over sets of common issues. We...

This paper explores the relationship between investment and political violence through several possible mechanisms. Investment as a predictor of future violence implies that low private sector investment today provides a robust indicator of high violence tomorrow. "Rent-capture" or predation...

The literature relating economic activity to political violence posits greedy rebels (Collier, 2000) but not greedy governments. Could capturing tax revenue motivate governments to step up their counter insurgency operations, just as extortion motivates rebel violence? Panel data on political...

This paper presents a comprehensive but relatively brief historical survey of U.S. trade-policy over the last 75 years. It is aimed at individuals who are not already familiar with the concepts and terminology used in discussions of trade policy and the domestic and international institutional...

We propose a model of trade agreements in which contracting is costly, and as a consequence the optimal agreement may be incomplete. In spite of its simplicity, the model yields rich predictions on the structure of the optimal trade agreement and how this depends on the fundamentals of the...

What do trade negotiators negotiate about? There are two distinct theoretical approaches in the economics literature that offer an answer to this question: the terms-of-trade theory and the commitment theory. The terms-of-trade theory holds that trade agreements are useful to governments as a...

Colonial Americans complained that gold and silver coins (specie) were chronically scarce. These coins could be acquired only through importation. Given unrestricted trade in specie, market arbitrage should have eliminated chronic scarcity. A model of efficient barter and local inside money is...

This paper studies the trade of China in the past 150 years, starting from the first opening of China after the Opium War. The main purpose of the paper is to identify what is (and was) China's 'normal' level of foreign trade, and how these levels changed under different trade regimes, from 1840...

We exploit the recent declassification of CIA documents and examine whether there is evidence of US power being used to influence countries' decisions regarding international trade. We measure US influence using a newly constructed annual panel of CIA interventions aimed at installing and...

The U.S. Constitution removed real and monetary trade barriers between the states. By contrast, these states when they were British colonies exercised considerable real and monetary autonomy over their borders. Purchasing power parity is used to measure how much economic integration between the...