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

国际冲突学者经常关注卷入军事冲突的国家的有远见的行为。那些分析国际贸易与国家间冲突关系的人认为，两个国家之间更大程度的相互依赖增加了军事冲突的成本，降低了国家领导人的动机。与贸易伙伴发生冲突。但直到最近，研究人员才将这种战略复杂性归因于相关的经济行为体。Morrow（1999）提出了一种理性预期的方法来研究贸易和冲突。他认为，交易员是理性的行为者，他们从国与国之间的政治关系中形成对国家间冲突的预期。其他学者发现了这一说法的部分经验支持。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动的引力模型，进一步推进了贸易与冲突的研究。博士生研究冲突如何在暴力发生时直接影响国际贸易，以及通过贸易公司对冲突的预期间接影响国际贸易。在这一建议中，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。该学生使用重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，在此过程中改变双边贸易的水平。冲突影响贸易的观点随后被扩展为假设企业对未来的冲突产生了理性预期。该学生认为，对冲突的预期也会影响交易商品的市场。此外，他还扩展了这一论点，认为与同一国家之间经常性冲突相关的因素将增加对未来冲突的预期。这就产生了关于竞争、领土冲突和强加的政权变化对国家间贸易影响的假设，学生开发了一个研究设计，在战后双边贸易中测试这些假设。更广泛的影响本项目对那些在经济/安全学科和决策圈的人有更普遍的影响。用理性预期的方法研究贸易与冲突对“自由贸易带来和平”这一命题具有重要意义。

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.