War in Syria has been raging for more than five years. A popular uprising in March 2011 was hijacked by extremist elements and turned into a non-international armed conflict of savage proportions. This, in turn, has drawn in a number of countries to support one side or the other. Principally, it...

This paper considers two alternative procedures for multi-issue bargaining, so-called sectoral approach (issue-by-issue bargaining) and single-undertaking (single package bargaining), and compares the outcomes under the alternative procedures. It is asserted that if early agreement in an issue...

Economic policy is generally directed to achieve particular objectives which include targets for inflation, desirable unemployment levels, economic growth pace, standard of living of citizens among others. An economic policy is a course of action that is intended to influence or control the...

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) can increase Chinese soft power and decrease it of potential rivals. As the world is at peace generally, the ability to persuade citizens of other countries is very important. Soft power is measured by Gallup global poll, which judges the performance of leadership...

In this paper, we assess the implications of changes in bilateral diplomatic relations with the United States for economic relations. We identify countries whose relations with the US changed during two historic and significant milestones in the past three decades, and a third group of countries...

In this paper, we provide evidence of the impact of refugee flows on international trade in the short run. Using panel data on asylum applications in the EU from 2002 to 2015, we develop a novel measure of interstate tensions based on refugee admission rates. Humanitarian conditions in the...

This paper investigates the effects of trade asymmetry on political conflicts and the possible heterogeneity. The study used instrumental variable regression method based on 142 countries' data from 1979 to 2012. The estimation results show that a 1% rise in trade asymmetry leads to a 2.67%...

In December 2019, Congress established the U.S. Space Force as an independent uniformed military service within the Department of the Air Force. Although many defense analysts had long argued for a reorganization of the Department of Defense’s space capabilities, few had settled on this...

We develop a theory of interstate conflict in which the degree of genealogical relatedness between populations has a positive effect on their conflict propensities because more closely related populations, on average, tend to interact more and develop more disputes over sets of common issues. We...

The data issued by the WTO Secretariat on disputes shows that "developing countries" have participated in one-third of the cases 1995-2005. The data should be corrected to exclude some OECD member countries and some others with high GDP per capita. These adjustments reduce by about 30 the number...