the effects of terrorism and war on the oil price stock index relationship abstract the effects war and terrorism have on the covariance between oil prices and the indices of four major stock markets the american s p500 the european dax cac40 and ftse100 using non linear bekk garch type models are investigated the findings indicate that the covariance between stock and oil returns is affected by war a tentative explanation is that the two wars examined here predispose investors and market agents for more profound and longer lasting effects on global markets on the other hand terrorist incidents that are one off unanticipated security shocks only the co movement between cac40 dax and oil returns is affected and no significant impact is observed in the relationship between the s p500 ftse100 and oil returns this difference in the reaction may tentatively be interpreted as indicating that the latter are more efficient in absorbing the impact of terrorist attacks

withholding consumption a social dilemma perspective on consumer boycotts this article draws on social dilemma theory and reference group theory to understand the individual boycott decision and tests the predictions stemming from this conceptualization in two experiments consistent with our predictions consumers likelihood of participating in both economic and social issue boycotts is jointly determined by their perceptions of the boycott s likelihood of success their susceptibility to normative social influences and the costs they incur in boycotting consumers success perceptions are in turn determined by their expectations of overall participation and efficacy as well as the message frame inherent in proboycott communications two key determinants of consumers boycotting costs are their preference for the boycotted product and their access to its substitutes more specifically consumers who are more susceptible to the normative influence exerted by the reference group of potential boycotters are more influenced by expected overall participation rates in their boycott likelihood

inflation and world equity selection although much has been written about inflation and stock returns in the united states and the united kingdom little is known about the impact of inflation on a broader menu of countries consistent with previous research examining time series of inflation and stock returns in the united states this study of inflation in 41 developed and emerging equity markets documents a significant negative relation for most countries cross sectional analysis however indicates that inflation as a country attribute commands a positive premium this finding suggests that inflation reveals information about risk exposure supporting the risk interpretation the correlation between a country s inflation rate and the oecd rate of inflation is positively related to the country s equity return correlation with world market returns further equity volatility is positively linked to average inflation rates more than 50 percent of the cross sectional variation in average inflation rates can be accounted for by country cr

equilibrium in sealed high bid auctions there is a voluminous theoretical literature on sealed high bid auctions auctions in which bids are sealed and the high bidder pays his bid see for example vickrey 1961 myerson 1981 riley and samuelson 1981 milgrom and weber 1982 matthews 1983 maskin and riley 1984 holt 1980 cox smith and walker 1988 a critical property on which this literature relies is the existence of equilibrium in which buyers bidding strategies are monotonic in their types this enables the analyst to perform comparative statics as the distribution of types changes and to compare the welfare properties of the high bid auction with those of other auction institutions one case in which the existence of monotonic equilibrium is readily established is that in which buyers types are distributed smoothly independently and symmetrically in this case there exists a symmetric equilibrium one in which all bidders share the same bidding behaviour as a function of their valuations and this bid function is the solution to a first order differential equation

conflict cooperation and commerce the effect of international political interactions on bilateral trade flows the public choice approach to political economy is employed to gain insight into the connection between international politics and trade flows a model is constructed in which importers are assumed to be rational utility maximizers who seek to satisfy international security as well as economic welfare objectives this model of bilateral trade flows reflects contemporary theory in the field of international economics and it explicitly incorporates the general foreign policy orientation of importers among its determinants the model is tested in 16 annual crosssectional estimations 1960 75 for a complete network of 25 countries the findings show considerable support for the hypothesis that trade flows are significantly influenced by broad political relations of amity and enmity between nations the author concludes that nations adjust trade ties to satisfy security as well as economic welfare goals and that a formal political economy of trade should reflect this fact

political news and stock prices the case of saddam hussein contracts abstract this paper studies the association between the market s expectations of saddam hussein s fall from power as reflected in saddam contract prices and stock prices oil prices and exchange rates during the war a rise in the probability of saddam s fall which also indicated a speedy end to the war was positively and significantly associated with stock prices strengthened the dollar against the euro and lowered oil prices before the war a rise in the probability of saddam s fall which may also have indicated the probability of a costly war breaking out lowered stock prices which adjusted gradually to this information

asset market perspectives on the israeli palestinian conflict this paper locates turning points in the israeli palestinian conflict since the late 1980s using asset market data from israel and the palestinian authority pa we find that major escalations in violence such as the outbreak of the intifada in 2000 lead to significant declines in asset prices in both israel and the pa conversely major peace initiatives such as the oslo accords in 1993 and the road map plan in 2003 lead to substantial increases in asset prices on both sides of the conflict an additional novel finding is that asset markets respond positively to the success of politicians who favour a negotiated settlement to the conflict

paying a visit the dalai lama effect on international trade is political compliance a precondition for healthy trade relations with china the chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners officials and the dalai lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with china we run a gravity model of exports to china from 159 partner countries between 1991 and 2008 to test the extent to which bilateral tensions affect trade with autocratic china in particular we investigate empirically whether countries that receive the dalai lama despite china s opposition experience a significant reduction of their exports to china in order to account for the potential endogeneity of meetings with the dalai lama the number of tibet support groups and the travel pattern of the tibetan leader are used as instruments our empirical results support the idea that countries officially receiving the dalai lama at the highest political level are punished through a reduction of their exports to china however this dalai lama effect is only observed for the hu jintao era and not for earlier periods furthermore we find that this effect is mainly driven by reduced exports of machinery and transport equipment and that it disappears two years after a meeting took place

investing in the peace economic interdependence and international conflict research appears to substantiate the liberal conviction that trade fosters global peace still existing understanding of linkages between cone ict and international economics is limited in at least two ways first cross border economic relationships are far broader than just trade global capital markets dwarf the exchange of goods and services and states engage in varying degrees of monetary policy coordination second the manner in which economics is said to inhibit cone ict behavior is implausible in light of new analytical insights about the causes of war we discuss and then demonstrate formally how interdependence can ine uence states recourse to military violence the risk of disrupting economic linkages particularly access to capital may occasionally deter minor contests between interdependent states but such opportunity costs will typically fail to preclude militarized disputes instead interdependence offers nonmilitarized avenues for communicating resolve through costly signaling our quantitative results show that capital interdependence contributes to peace independent of the effects of trade democracy interest and other variables students of world politics have long argued that peace is a positive externality of global commerce theorists like montesquieu and kant and practitioners like woodrow wilson asserted that economic relations between states pacify political interaction mounting evidence in recent years appears to substantiate these claims multiple studies many identie ed with the democratic peace link interstate trade with reductions in militarized disputes or wars 1 while we concur with the evolving

intra industry foreign direct investment we use a new firm level data set that establishes the location ownership and activity of 650 000 multinational subsidiaries close to a comprehensive picture of global multinational activity a number of patterns emerge from the data most foreign direct investment fdi occurs between rich countries the share of vertical fdi subsidiaries which provide inputs to their parent firms is larger than commonly thought even within developed countries more than half of all vertical subsidiaries are only observable at the four digit level because the inputs they are supplying are so proximate to their parent firms final good that they appear identical at the two digit level we call these proximate subsidiaries intra industry vertical fdi and find that their location and activity are significantly different to the inter industry vertical fdi visible at the two digit level these subsidiaries are not readily explained by the comparative advantage considerations in traditional models where firms locate their low skill production stages abroad in low skill countries to take advantage of factor cost differences we find that overwhelmingly multinationals tend to own the stages of production proximate to their final production giving rise to a class of high skill intra industry vertical fdi

business as usual economic responses to political tensions do political tensions harm economic relations theories claim that trade prevents war and political relations motivate trade but less is known about whether smaller shifts in political relations impact economic exchange looking at two major economies we show that negative events have not hurt u s or japanese trade or investment flows we then examine specific incidents of tensions in u s french and sino japanese relations over the past decade two case pairs that allow us to compare varying levels of political tension given high existing economic interdependence and different alliance relations aggregate economic flows and high salience sectors like wine and autos are unaffected by the deterioration of political relations in an era of globalization actors lack incentives to link political and economic relations we argue that sunk costs in existing trade and investment make governments firms and consumers unlikely to change their behavior in response to political disputes d o political tensions have economic consequences the relationship between economic interdependence and conflict has been a central debate in international relations leading scholars contend that states with good relations should have more trade than states with poor relations and import decisions of firms will respond to the climate of friendliness orhostilitythatexistsbetweentheimporterandexporter morrow siverson and tabares 1998 650 pollins 1989b 739 analysis of trade and conflict in a simultaneous equations model concludes that political relations are driving commerce not the other way around keshk pollins and reuveny 2004 1175 we reexamine these arguments in the current globalization era to show that sunk costs reduce incentives for state and private actors to link political and economic relations 1

does trade still follow the flag t he economic ties between any two nations are frequently affected by a warming or cooling of bilateral diplomatic relations but there is little to be found in modern economics or political science that helps us understand the connections between international politics and commerce the notion that international economics could be studied in isolation from its political underpinnings or consequences would have been quite alien to mercantilist thinkers in the eighteenth century or to the critics or advocates of imperialism in the nineteenth that economics and politics were inextricably intertwined was taken as a matter of course indeed trade follows the flag was central to these people s understanding of world politics and international economics intellectual trends over the past century radically changed this worldview the ascendancy of liberalism in economic thought brought with it a compartmentalization of disciplines that may now be eroding but we are left with theories of international politics and economics that are very weakly bridged the objective of this study is to map one of the many connections between international politics and commercial ties specifically i seek to identify and measure the effect of changes in state to state diplomatic relations on trade flows between those nations theoretical underpinnings of my effort are in the tradition of public choice political economy frey 1984 because i treat importers as rational utility maximizers and their behavior as determined by preferences pursued within a context of specified constraints the model i put forward is wholly consistent with contemporary neoclassical trade theory but i extend the economists notion of welfare and contend that importers take account not only of the price and quantity of goods and services but of the place of origin of these products and the political relationship between the importing and the exporting nation they do so essentially for traditional security reasons that is importers are motivated to manage their trade relations in ways that minimize risks of disruption in supply or the possibility of hurting friends or

power politics and international trade r recent literature attributes the relative scarcity of open international markets to the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade we argue that the prisoner s dilemma representation does not reflect the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in an anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly doing so leads us to two conclusions 1 free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances and 2 alliances are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions if they are embedded in bipolar systems than in multipolar systems using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 we test these hypotheses the results of the analysis make it clear that alliances do have a direct statistically significant and large impact on bilateral trade flows and that this relationship is stronger in bipolar rather than in multipolar systems in the early 1970s students of international relations began what would become a long and heated debate about the political correlates of open international markets recently however an important element of consensus has begun to emerge most contributors to this debate now seem to agree that the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade explains the relative dearth of open international markets here we argue that what has become the standard prisoner s dilemma representation neglects the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in the anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly in order to do so we construct and analyze a simple game theoretic model the results of this analysis demonstrate that tariff games between allies differ systematically from those played between actual or potential adversaries these differences imply that free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances however our analysis also suggests that the evolutionary prospects of alliances vary those that are the products of bipolar systems are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions than are their multipolar counterparts less credible exit threats and clearer responsibilities for alliance stability explain the advantage of a bipolar system we test this argument using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 the empirical analysis supports our argument it demonstrates that alliances have a direct statistically significant and large effect upon bilateral trade moreover it shows that on average alliances have a much stronger effect on trade in a bipolar than in a multipolar world 2

the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on international conflict across levels of analysis this study develops a social network analytic approach to conceptualize and measure interdependence across levels of analysis this framework contains several innovations first it integrates sensitivity interdependence the effects of changes in one state on other states with vulnerability interdependence the opportunity costs of breaking a relationship second it measures interdependence at different levels of analysis and across multiple relationships third it integrates multiple dimensions of interdependence into a single measure i derive hypotheses from the realist and liberal paradigms regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on monadic dyadic and systemic conflict these hypotheses are tested via data on alliances military capability and trade the findings provide robust support to the expectations of the liberal paradigm regarding the effects of strategic and economic interdependence on conflict on the other hand the expectations of the realist paradigm are not supported i discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of this approach

the political determinants of international trade the major powers 1907 1990 we test three arguments about the effect of international politics on trade flows the first argument states that trade flows are greater between states with similar interests than those with dissimilar interests the second that trade flows are greater in democratic dyads than nondemocratic dyads and the third that trade flows are greater between allies we examine trade flows between the major powers from 1907 to 1990 this period provides variation on all three independent variables of interest and allows us to separate the three arguments empirically we estimate a gravity model of trade with the above political variables added our results demonstrate that joint democracy and common interests increase trade in a dyad but alliances generally do not even when controlling for polarity of the system

large shocks in the volatility of the dow jones industrial average index 1928 2013 we determine the events that cause large shocks in volatility of the djia index over the period 1928 2013 using a new semi parametric test based on conditional heteroscedasticity models we find that these large shocks can be associated with particular events financial crashes elections wars monetary policies etc we show that some shocks are not identified as extraordinary movements by the investors due to their occurring during high volatility episodes especially the 1929 1934 1937 1938 and 2007 2011 periods

hyteresis in import prices the beachhead effect this paper shows that temporary real exchange rate fluctuations can have persistent hysteretic effects on trade specifically when market entry costs are sunk sufficiently large exchange rate shocks alter domestic market structure and thereby induce hysteresis this simple result has strong implications for exchange rate theory t rade policy and estimation of trade equations empirical evidence su ggests that the recent dollar overvaluation induced hysteresis in u s import prices namely the aggregate pass through equation of exchange rates to import prices shifted in the 1980s the shift s nature and timing is broadly consistent with the hysteresis hypothesis copyright 1988 by american economic association

diversifying away the risk of war and cross border political crisis this paper investigates the behavior of crude oil prices government bonds and stock market indices around outbreaks of severe international crises and wars using a constant mean return event study we show that these events are associated with positive and significant abnormal returns on oil and bonds which means that these two asset classes can potentially shelter shareholders from plummeting equity values during international crises a formal safe haven analysis confirms this insight such price movements may reflect a reallocation of funds across asset classes in response to the events as well as shifts in the demand for oil due to precautionary speculative and military motives we also calculate the weights for optimal portfolios which could provide insurance against conflict risk