It is well-established that political leaders matter for domestic outcomes, but statistical evidence for their relevance in international politics is still scarce. Here, we ask whether the personal relationship between political leaders can change the propensity for nonviolent conflict between...

Under extraterritorial sanctions the sanctioning country extends its policies to trade of third countries with the sanctioned country. A prominent example is former US President Trump's decision to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a multilateral agreement with Iran. The...

A frequently employed argument against imposing international sanctions is that rival superpowers are likely to bust sanctions to simultaneously shield the target, harm the sender, and make a profit. We evaluate the legitimacy of this concern by studying the effect of US sanctions on trade flows...

We argue that membership in International Organizations (IOs) is an important determinant of FDI inflows. To the extent that membership restricts a country from pursuing policies that are harmful to investors, it can signal low political risk. Using data over the 1971-2005 period, we find that...

I model the ocean as an array of lines set within a two-dimensional frame, and show how the Exclusive Economic Zone emerged as an equilibrium in customary international law. I find that custom codifies the efficient Nash equilibrium of enclosure for nearshore fisheries. For highly migratory and...

Banking regulation invites banks to gamble when buying government bonds that regulators consider to be risk-free. The adverse effects on financial stability are known. In turn, this study shows that governments have an incentive to use banking regulation in order to enhance their fiscal...

We empirically analyze the effect of UN and US economic sanctions on life expectancy and its gender gap in target countries. Our sample covers 98 less developed and newly industrialized countries over the period 1977-2012. We employ a matching approach to account for the endogeneity of...

We study the effects of financial sanctions on cross-border credit supply. Using a differences-in-differences approach to analyze eleven sanctions episodes between 2002 and 2015, we find that banks located in Germany reduce their positions in countries with sanctioned entities by 38%. The...

Using Chinese firm-level trade data combined with global anti-dumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) investigations, we uncover a previously overlooked cost of industrial policy under WTO agreements. At every stage of AD/CVD investigation, subsidies significantly raise the probability of...