We analyze the interaction of economic and political determinants of free trade agreements (FTA). In addition to standard trade gains, FTAs can promote peaceful relations by offering a political forum and by increasing the opportunity cost of conflicts that disrupt trade. If policy makers...

This paper analyzes the determinants of cross-border asset holdings on cross-country data and a Swedish data set. We focus our analysis on the effect of the euro not only for the determinants of bond holdings, but also of equity and banking assets. With the help of a simple theoretical model, we...

This paper analyses theoretically and empirically the relationship between trade and war. We show that the intuition that trade promotes peace is only partially true even in a model where trade is beneficial to all, war reduces trade and leaders take into account the costs of war. When war can...