Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Rational Expectations, International Trade, and Interstate Conflict

国际冲突学者经常关注参与军事冲突的国家的远见行为。 那些分析国际贸易和国家间冲突之间关系的人认为，两个国家之间更大的相互依赖增加了军事冲突的成本，减少了国家领导人的动机。与贸易伙伴发生冲突。 但直到最近，研究人员才将同样水平的战略复杂性归因于相关的经济参与者。 Morrow（1999）建议用理性预期的方法来研究贸易和冲突。 他认为，贸易商是理性的行为者，他们从国家之间的政治关系中发展出对国家间冲突的预期。 其他学者发现部分实证支持这一主张。本博士论文研究支持项目通过将冲突的理性预期纳入双边贸易流的引力模型，进一步推进了贸易和冲突的研究。 的博士学生探讨冲突如何影响国际贸易的问题，既直接当暴力发生，并通过贸易公司发展的冲突的预期间接。 在这一提议中，双边贸易水平是企业市场行为的结果，但国家之间或国家内部的冲突影响着决定贸易的经济力量。这位学生使用引力方程来解释纯粹基于市场力量的贸易流动，并认为冲突会影响这些市场力量，从而改变双边贸易的水平。 冲突影响贸易的想法，然后通过假设企业对未来的冲突发展理性预期扩展。 这位学生认为，对冲突的预期也会影响商品交易市场。 此外，他将这一论点扩展到表明，与同一国家之间经常性冲突有关的因素将增加对未来冲突的预期。 这导致在假设的竞争，领土冲突的影响，并施加政权的变化对国家之间的贸易和学生开发的研究设计，测试这些假设对战后双边贸易。更广泛的影响这个项目有更广泛的影响，为那些在经济学/安全学科和那些在决策圈。 理性预期的方法来研究贸易和冲突可能会对自由贸易带来和平的主张产生重大影响。

International conflict scholars often focus on the farsighted behavior of states involved in military conflict. Those analyzing the relationship between international trade and interstate conflict argue that greater interdependence among a pair of states increases the costs of military conflict, reducing the incentive for state leaders. to engage in conflicts with trade partners. But until recently researchers did not attribute the same level of strategic sophistication to the economic actors involved. Morrow (1999) suggests a rational expectations approach to the study of trade and conflict. He argues that traders are rational actors who develop expectations about interstate conflict from the political relationships between states. Other scholars find partial empirical support for this claim.This Doctoral Dissertation Research Support project advances the study of trade and conflict further by incorporating rational expectations of conflict into a gravity model of bilateral trade flows. The Ph.D. student examines the question of how conflict influences international trade both directly when violence occurs, and indirectly through the expectations of conflict that trading firms develop. In this proposal, bilateral trade levels are the result of market behavior by firms, but conflict between or within states influences the economic forces that determine trade. The student uses the gravity equation to explain trade flows based on purely market forces and argues that conflict affects these market forces, changing the level of bilateral trade in the process. The idea that conflict affects trade is then extended by assuming that firms develop rational expectations about future conflicts. The student argues that expectations of conflict will also affect the market for traded goods. Moreover, he extends this argument to suggest that factors associated with recurrent conflict between the same states will increase expectations of a future conflict. This results in hypotheses about the effects of rivalry, conflict over territory, and imposed regime changes on trade between states and the student develops a research design that tests these hypotheses on post-war bilateral trade.Broader ImpactThis project has more general implications for those in the economics/security discipline and those in policy-making circles. A rational expectations approach to the study of trade and conflict could have significant implications for the liberal-trade brings peace proposition.