Is political compliance a precondition for healthy trade relations with China? The Chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners' officials and the Dalai Lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with China. We run a gravity model of...

The Chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners' officials and the Dalai Lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with China. We run a gravity model of exports to China from 159 partner countries between 1991 and 2008 to test to which...

With growing US protectionism and uncertainties in the transatlantic relationship it is time for the EU to consider diversifying its external ties and look for other allies that support the idea of free trade gains and have a common interest in maintaining the international rules based trading...

Almost eight years after the launch of the Doha Round, the WTO negotiations remain mired in a swamp of detail, with many participants unwilling or unable to make the hard decisions which would bring the Round to a conclusion. Meanwhile, the world has changed dramatically with the onset of a...

Does China’s quest for oil raise tensions with the United States? This paper examines the effect of international relations on global oil trade patterns. Using voting records for the United Nations General Assembly to measure the state of international relations, we estimate a modified gravity...

Policymakers increasingly view China’s rapidly growing wealth as a threat. China currently ranks second, or perhaps even first, in the world in gross domestic product (although 78th in per capita GDP), and the fear is that China will acquire military prowess commensurate with its wealth and...

Economic sanctions are a frequent instrument of foreign policy. In a diplomatic conflict, they aim to elicit a change in the policies of foreign governments by damaging their economy. However, sanctions are not costless for the sending economy, where domestic firms involved in business with the...

Against the backdrop of the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2017 the authors propose to focus the political agenda on the threats to free trade which emerged by the protectionist views of the Trump government, the imminent weakening of the EU Common...

While economic sanctions may be attractive policy tools for governments wanting to express discontent with a country's behaviour, it is arguable if from an economic perspective sanctions can achieve the change that is often envisaged through the punitive measures taken. In fact, the literature...

Economic sanctions are a frequently used tool of foreign policy. Constraining trade flows towards or from the target country is supposed to coerce its government into changing certain policies. However, sanctions constitute an obstacle to trade, thereby affecting flows of all countries,...