In this paper we investigate whether the effects of terrorism in one country spillover to affect trade in neighboring nations. Using a sample of more than 160 countries from 1976 to 2014, we report robust evidence that terrorist attacks in a nation's contiguous neighbors significantly reduce...

Why do some societies fail to adopt more efficient institutions in response to changing economic conditions? And why do such conditions sometimes generate ideological backlashes and at other times lead to transformative sociopolitical movements? We propose an explanation that highlights the...

Using a data set of historical battles from 1600 to 1973, this paper analyzes the empirical determinants of tactical success in modern war. Based on a reduced form approach we consider key elements of military theory as factors in the production of combat success, formalized in a military...

Estimating the effect of trade on capital flows is difficult given the inherent identification problem. We use fluctuations in rainfall to capture the exogenous variation in trade between Germany, France, the U.K., and the Ottoman Empire during 1859-1913. The provisionistic policy of the Ottoman...

In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus...

While most civil wars seem to have an economic basis, they are generally pushed by political, ethnic, and religious differences. This paper attempts to identify the drivers of the Syrian civil war of 2011 by investigating the role of ethnic divisions in starting a conflict. We integrate a...

We show that the exposure to war-related violence increases the quantity of children temporarily, with permanent negative consequences for the quality of the current and previous cohort of children. Our empirical evidence is based on Nepal, which experienced a ten year long civil conflict of...

We develop a new analytical framework for both cross-border services trade and services trade through foreign affiliates, based on heterogeneous firms operating under oligopoly. This leads to direct predictions about choice of services delivery (mode of delivery) at the firm level, and about the...

Working with a panel dataset of of OECD countries over the decade 1994-2004, we examine linkages between cross-border trade and FDI in the service sectors. We first develop a consistent analytical framework for the application of the gravity model jointly to services trade and commercial...

We investigate how the export performance of firms in China is influenced by credit constraints. Using panel data from Chinese customs for 1997-2007, we show that credit constraints restrict international trade flows and affect the sectoral composition of firms’ activity. We confirm that...