KCG Lunch-Time Seminar on Trade, Development, Democracy and Conflict on Oct. 15, 2019

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Dr. Katrin Kamin (Kiel University & GIGA Hamburg) will give a research seminar titled “Heterogeneity Matters: On the Dynamic Interaction between Trade, Development, Democracy and Conflict” on October 15, 2019 at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). The seminar is co-organised by IfW and KCG.

Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a return to protectionist measures as well as a global rise in nationalist movements. Understanding the economic and political effects of such changes in trade policies or levels of democracy has gained renewed importance. There is a vast amount of literature studying the bilateral relationships between international trade flows, democracy, development and conflict. While it finds strong evidence for correlations between the four factors so far no conclusive evidence has been presented as to the direction of causal links between the factors. This paper employs a country specific vector autoregressive model allowing for endogenous dynamic interactions between trade, democracy, development and conflict. More specifically, it analyses how shocks in one of these variables affect the others over time to investigate “what causes what”. The dataset used covers 68 countries and the years 1960 to 2016. Results confirm the presence of simultaneous effects from all variables on one another. In addition, effect size and sign are substantially heterogeneous across countries providing strong evidence against the validity of the homogeneous slope parameter assumption.

The seminar will take place at 12.30 – 13.30 on Oct. 15, 2019 (Tuesday) in the Lecture Hall at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Kiellinie 66, 24105 Kiel). More information about the KCG Lunch-Time Seminars can be found here.