The EMU fiscal adjustment paths of the four Southern Europe members (Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal – SE-4) vary along two dimensions: a) cross-temporal (pre- and post-EMU accession) and b) cross-country. We account for the cross-temporal variation by distinguishing between the ‘hard’...

In the post-Constitution EU, the rotating Presidency would be replaced by a hybrid system combining a rotating component with the establishment of a permanent President for the European Council. Using a principal-agent framework, we look at the supply and demand for formal leadership in the new...

Classical-liberal arguments about the pacifying effects of international trade are revisited, and it is argued that they consistently refer to the ability of trade to provide 'connections' between people and to create a perceived 'global community'. Dependency and openness are commonly used to...

Hegre provides an interesting extension and an important amendment to my previous article. Here, I evaluate the ratio of minimum probabilities of victory given different assumptions about the nature of conflict. The analysis corroborates my previous conclusion that trade has the strongest...

A general multi-country model of trade and conflict is outlined and comparative static results for the number of countries are explored. Conflict is defined as a credible threat to use force to appropriate resources of another country. The model shows that, in general, trade reduces the...

Little attention has been paid to how and when economic sanctions end, especially compared with the amount of research on their effectiveness. A game in which the ending of sanctions is part of interstate bargaining about a contested policy is analyzed. In case of audience costs, sanctions may...

Empirical studies on trade and conflict generally make use of highly aggregated data. There are, however, good theoretical arguments to suspect that trade in some goods should have a bigger impact on the likelihood of conflict than trade in others. This article examines the relationship between...