IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kea/keappr/ker-20210701-37-2-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Economic Costs of Diplomatic Conflict: Evidence from the South Korea–China THAAD Dispute

Author

Listed:
  • Hyejin Kim

    (Bank of Korea)

  • Jungmin Lee

    (Seoul National University and Institute of Labor Economics (IZA))

Abstract

We examine the economic effect of the diplomatic conflict between South Korea and China that resulted from the joint decision by South Korea and the U.S. to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system in the Korean peninsula. Using the synthetic control method, we estimate the conflict’s effects on Chinese tourists to Korea and stock prices of China-related Korean firms. We find that a negative effect on the inflow of tourists appeared with a lag of 3 months after the announcement of the decision and persisted for approximately 18 months. By contrast, the effects on the stock market appeared immediately but were insignificant and short-lived.

Suggested Citation

  • Hyejin Kim & Jungmin Lee, 2021. "The Economic Costs of Diplomatic Conflict: Evidence from the South Korea–China THAAD Dispute," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 37, pages 225-262.
    • Handle: RePEc:kea:keappr:ker-20210701-37-2-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://keapaper.kea.ne.kr/RePEc/kea/keappr/KER-20210701-37-2-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lee, Yong Suk, 2018. "International isolation and regional inequality: Evidence from sanctions on North Korea," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 34-51.
    2. de Sousa, José & Mayer, Thierry & Zignago, Soledad, 2012. "Market access in global and regional trade," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1037-1052.
    3. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10187 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Massimo Guidolin & Eliana La Ferrara, 2010. "The economic effects of violent conflict: Evidence from asset market reactions," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 47(6), pages 671-684, November.
    5. Aidt, Toke & Dutta, Jayasri & Sena, Vania, 2008. "Governance regimes, corruption and growth: Theory and evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 195-220, June.
    6. Philip I. Levy, 1999. "Sanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 415-420, May.
    7. Aisen, Ari & Veiga, Francisco José, 2013. "How does political instability affect economic growth?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 151-167.
    8. Alberto Abadie & Alexis Diamond & Jens Hainmueller, 2015. "Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(2), pages 495-510, February.
    9. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    10. Afesorgbor, Sylvanus Kwaku, 2019. "The impact of economic sanctions on international trade: How do threatened sanctions compare with imposed sanctions?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 11-26.
    11. Gary Clyde Hufbauer & Kimberly Ann Elliott, 1999. "Same Song, Same Refrain? Economic Sanctions in the 1990's," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 403-408, May.
    12. Gary Clyde Hufbauer & Jeffrey J. Schott & Kimberly Ann Elliott, 2009. "Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 3rd Edition (paper)," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 4129, October.
    13. Peter A. G. van Bergeijk, 1995. "The Impact of Economic Sanctions in the 1990s," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 443-455, May.
    14. CHEN Cheng & SENGA Tatsuro & SUN Chang & ZHANG Hongyong, 2016. "Firm Expectations and Investment: Evidence from the China-Japan Island Dispute," Discussion papers 16090, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    15. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10187 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Gary Clyde Hufbauer & Jeffrey J. Schott & Kimberly Ann Elliott, 2009. "Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 3rd Edition softcover with CD," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 4310, January.
    17. Miguel, Edward & Roland, Gérard, 2011. "The long-run impact of bombing Vietnam," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 1-15, September.
    18. Oechslin, Manuel, 2014. "Targeting autocrats: Economic sanctions and regime change," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 24-40.
    19. Mirkina, Irina, 2018. "FDI and sanctions: An empirical analysis of short- and long-run effects," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 198-225.
    20. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    21. Heilmann, Kilian, 2016. "Does political conflict hurt trade? Evidence from consumer boycotts," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 179-191.
    22. Gharehgozli, Orkideh, 2017. "An estimation of the economic cost of recent sanctions on Iran using the synthetic control method," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 141-144.
    23. Lance Davis & Stanley Engerman, 2003. "History Lessons: Sanctions - Neither War nor Peace," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 187-197, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hyejin Kim & Jungmin Lee, 2020. "The Economic Costs of Diplomatic Conflict," Working Papers 2020-25, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    2. Barseghyan, Gayane, 2019. "Sanctions and counter-sanctions : What did they do?," BOFIT Discussion Papers 24/2019, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    3. repec:zbw:bofitp:2019_024 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Vincenzo Bove & Jessica Di Salvatore & Roberto Nisticò, 2023. "Economic Sanctions and Trade Flows in the Neighborhood," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(4), pages 671-697.
    5. Daniel Albalate & Germà Bel & Ferran A. Mazaira-Font, 2020. "Ensuring Stability, Accuracy and Meaningfulness in Synthetic Control Methods: The Regularized SHAP-Distance Method," IREA Working Papers 202005, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Apr 2020.
    6. Samer Matta & Michael Bleaney & Simon Appleton, 2022. "The economic impact of political instability and mass civil protest," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(1), pages 253-270, March.
    7. Lee, Yong Suk, 2018. "International isolation and regional inequality: Evidence from sanctions on North Korea," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 34-51.
    8. Dario Laudati & M. Hashem Pesaran, 2023. "Identifying the effects of sanctions on the Iranian economy using newspaper coverage," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 271-294, April.
    9. Monastiriotis, Vassilis & Zilic, Ivan, 2020. "The economic effects of political disintegration: Lessons from Serbia and Montenegro," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    10. Gharehgozli, Orkideh, 2021. "An empirical comparison between a regression framework and the Synthetic Control Method," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 70-81.
    11. David Gilchrist & Thomas Emery & Nuno Garoupa & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Synthetic Control Method: A tool for comparative case studies in economic history," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 409-445, April.
    12. Jerg Gutmann & Matthias Neuenkirch & Florian Neumeier, 2021. "Sanctioned to Death? The Impact of Economic Sanctions on Life Expectancy and its Gender Gap," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(1), pages 139-162, January.
    13. Daniel Albalate & Germà Bel & Ferran A. Mazaira-Font, 2021. "Decoupling synthetic control methods to ensure stability, accuracy and meaningfulness," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 549-584, December.
    14. Wu, Rongxin & Tan, Zhizhou & Lin, Boqiang, 2023. "Does carbon emission trading scheme really improve the CO2 emission efficiency? Evidence from China's iron and steel industry," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    15. Moghaddasi Kelishomi, Ali & Nisticò, Roberto, 2022. "Employment effects of economic sanctions in Iran," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    16. Toke S. Aidt & Facundo Albornoz & Esther Hauk, 2021. "Foreign Influence and Domestic Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 426-487, June.
    17. Hönig, Tillman, 2017. "The Impact of Peace: Evidence from Nigeria," MPRA Paper 83302, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Meyer, Klaus E. & Fang, Tony & Panibratov, Andrei Y. & Peng, Mike W. & Gaur, Ajai, 2023. "International business under sanctions," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 58(2).
    19. Görg, Holger & Jacobs, Anna & Meuchelböck, Saskia, 2023. "Who Is to Suffer? Quantifying the Impact of Sanctions on German Firms," IZA Discussion Papers 16146, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Tillman Hönig, 2019. "The Impact of Peace: Evidence from Nigeria," HiCN Working Papers 293, Households in Conflict Network.
    21. Abidemi Adisa & Michael Farmer & Jamie Bologna Pavlik, 2023. "The effect of the Mahathir regime on the Malaysian economy," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(1), pages 97-114, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Sanction; Geopolitical Events; Tourism; Stock Market; South Korea; China; Synthetic Control Method;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • Z30 - Other Special Topics - - Tourism Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kea:keappr:ker-20210701-37-2-02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: KEA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/keaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.