This study argues that a subtle shift in the primary independent variable of the commercial peace literature—from trade to free trade—provides an opportunity to respond to the some of the strongest criticisms of this research program. Free trade, and not just trade, promotes peace...

The security externalities of globalization and capitalism continue to play an influential role in peace research. Typical contributions to these interrelated areas of scientific inquiry address the hope that the external openness (commercial liberalism) and the internal freedom of an economy...

We analyze the impact of earthquakes on nighttime lights at a sub-national level, i.e. on grids of different size. We argue that existing studies on the impact of natural disasters on economic development have several important limitations, both at the level of the outcome variable – usually...

It is still unknown whether there is some deep structure to modern wars and terrorist campaigns that could allow reliable prediction of future patterns of violent events. Recent war research focuses on size distributions of violent events, with size defined by the number of people killed in each...

Social conflict pervades human society and fulfils a number of essential functions in its development and transformation, including the creation of new norms and institutions. The Historical Social Conflict Database (HiSCoD) is an ongoing project designed to provide to scholars and society at...

The development and application of models, which take the evolution of network dynamics into account, are receiving increasing attention. We contribute to this field and focus on a profile likelihood approach to model time-stamped event data for a large-scale dynamic network. We investigate the...

This paper uses the case of Sino-Southeast Asian relations to gain insights on China's ability to muster support for its global agenda. The analysis focuses on the regional-global nexus of interstate relations and explores the extent to which the quality of two states' regional relations...

Economic determinants of economic integration agreements (EIAs) have received ample attention in the economic literature. Political motivations for such agreements have been mostly studied as functions of domestic politics or in the context of conflict. In this paper I suggest a different...

This paper uses the case of Sino-Southeast Asian relations to gain insights on China's ability to muster support for its global agenda. The analysis focuses on the regional-global nexus of interstate relations and explores the extent to which the quality of two states' regional relations...

Social conflict pervades human society and fulfils a number of essential functions in its development and transformation, including the creation of new norms and institutions. The Historical Social Conflict Database (HiSCoD) is an ongoing project designed to provide to scholars and society at...