IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/inecon/v95y2015i2p305-318.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trade costs, conflicts, and defense spending

Author

Listed:
  • Seitz, Michael
  • Tarasov, Alexander
  • Zakharenko, Roman

Abstract

This paper develops a quantitative model of trade, military conflicts, and defense spending. Lowering trade costs between two countries reduces probability of an armed conflict between them, causing both to cut defense spending. This in turn causes a domino effect on defense spending by other countries. As a result, both countries and the rest of the world are better off. We estimate the model using data on trade, conflicts, and military spending. We find that, after reduction of costs of trade between a pair of hostile countries, the welfare effect of worldwide defense spending cuts is comparable in magnitude to the direct welfare gains from trade.

Suggested Citation

  • Seitz, Michael & Tarasov, Alexander & Zakharenko, Roman, 2015. "Trade costs, conflicts, and defense spending," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 305-318.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:inecon:v:95:y:2015:i:2:p:305-318
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2014.11.013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022199614001457
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reuven Glick & Alan M. Taylor, 2010. "Collateral Damage: Trade Disruption and the Economic Impact of War," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 102-127, February.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Mikhail Golosov & Aleh Tsyvinski & Pierre Yared, 2012. "A Dynamic Theory of Resource Wars," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 127(1), pages 283-331.
    3. Faten Ghosn & Glenn Palmer & Stuart A. Bremer, 2004. "The MID3 Data Set, 1993—2001: Procedures, Coding Rules, and Description," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 21(2), pages 133-154, April.
    4. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2006. "Globalization and the Gains From Variety," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 121(2), pages 541-585.
    5. Joshua Aizenman & Reuven Glick, 2006. "Military expenditure, threats, and growth," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2), pages 129-155.
    6. Vicard, Vincent, 2012. "Trade, conflict, and political integration: Explaining the heterogeneity of regional trade agreements," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 54-71.
    7. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    8. Robert C. Feenstra & Robert E. Lipsey & Haiyan Deng & Alyson C. Ma & Hengyong Mo, 2005. "World Trade Flows: 1962-2000," NBER Working Papers 11040, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Collier, Paul & Hoeffler, Anke, 2002. "Military expenditure - threats, aid, and arms races," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2927, The World Bank.
    10. Daron Acemoglu & Pierre Yared, 2010. "Political Limits to Globalization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 83-88, May.
    11. Marc J. Melitz & Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, 2008. "Market Size, Trade, and Productivity (DOI:10.111/j.1467-937x.2007.00463.x)," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(3), pages 985-985.
    12. Marc J. Melitz & Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, 2008. "Market Size, Trade, and Productivity," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(1), pages 295-316.
    13. Krugman, Paul, 1980. "Scale Economies, Product Differentiation, and the Pattern of Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(5), pages 950-959, December.
    14. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig, 2008. "Make Trade Not War?," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 75(3), pages 865-900.
    15. Mayer, Thierry & Zignago, Soledad, 2006. "Notes on CEPII’s distances measures," MPRA Paper 26469, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Alesina, Alberto & Spolaore, Enrico, 2006. "Conflict, defense spending, and the number of nations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 91-120, January.
    17. Polachek, Solomon W. & Seiglie, Carlos, 2007. "Trade, Peace and Democracy: An Analysis of Dyadic Dispute," Handbook of Defense Economics, Elsevier.
    18. Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig, 2012. "The Geography of Conflicts and Regional Trade Agreements," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 1-35, October.
    19. Vincent Vicard, 2006. "Trade, Conflicts, and Political Integration: the Regional Interplays," CESifo Working Paper Series 1839, CESifo Group Munich.
    20. Stergios Skaperdas & Constantinos Syropoulos, 2001. "Guns, Butter, and Openness: On the Relationship between Security and Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 353-357, May.
    21. repec:cup:apsrev:v:87:y:1993:i:02:p:408-420_10 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum, 2002. "Technology, Geography, and Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1741-1779, September.
    23. Douglas M. Stinnett & Jaroslav Tir & Paul F. Diehl & Philip Schafer & Charles Gochman, 2002. "The Correlates of War (Cow) Project Direct Contiguity Data, Version 3.0," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 19(2), pages 59-67, September.
    24. HÃ¥vard Hegre & John R Oneal & Bruce Russett, 2010. "Trade does promote peace: New simultaneous estimates of the reciprocal effects of trade and conflict," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 47(6), pages 763-774, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vincenzo Bove & Claudio Deiana & Roberto Nistic�, 2018. "Global Arms Trade and Oil Dependence," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(2), pages 272-299.
    2. Christos Kollias & Suzanna-Maria Paleologou, 2017. "The Globalization and Peace Nexus: Findings Using Two Composite Indices," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 871-885, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    General equilibrium; Gains from trade; Defense spending;

    JEL classification:

    • C5 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling
    • C6 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
    • H56 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - National Security and War

    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:eee:inecon:v:95:y:2015:i:2:p:305-318. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505552 .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.