The effect of terrorism on global oil prices has been largely explained through demand-side effects. We develop a model to include important supply-side imperfections to re-examine the effect of terrorism on the price of global oil stocks. Our model finds that if two criteria are met, conflict...

Heroism is a valued part of any society, yet its realization depends on the decisions of individual actors and a public reward to individuals who undertake heroic actions. Military combat related activities provide a useful starting point for thinking about the empirical nature of heroism....

This paper provides a comprehensive study into the economic determinants of transnational terrorism and the role that development plays in fostering a more peaceful world. We analyze models of conflict resolution to investigate the relative importance of economic development on domestic and...

We construct and estimate an economic model of religious giving. We employ a dynamic consumer optimization model with mortality in which intra-temporal utility stems from both consumption and religious contributions. Individuals also decide how to allocate resources between religious...

We investigate the lending behavior of banks by exploiting a rich panel dataset on the contract terms of approximately two million commercial and industrial loans granted by 580 banks between 1977-1993. Using a Markov switching panel model we demonstrate that banks change their lending standards...

The failure of the structural monetary model to beat a random walk in out-of-sample forecasting is one of the most celebrated empirical (non)findings in international finance. In this paper we show that this result is an artifact of the way monetary policy is measured. We construct a simple...

We study the factors that drive the international trade in major conventional weapons over the time period from 1971 to 2008, and show that conflicts of all types are important determinants in the demand for Arms. External war increases trade primarily along the intensive margin -- by boosting...

This paper provides an original study into how democratization and globalization influence transnational terrorism - examining the motives of terrorists and how democratic institutions and international integration influence non-state economic actors. We employ a gravity model to investigate the...