Economic Effects of the War in Donbas: Nightlights and the Ukrainian fight for freedom
Paper available to internal Duke affiliates only upon request. Professor Charles Becker, Faculty Advisor Professor Grace Kim, Faculty Advisor JEL Codes: F51; H56; O52; N44 View Data
The Impact of Conflict on Economic Activity: Night Lights and the Bosnian Civil War
by Stephanie Dodd Abstract The tendency of violent conflict to suppress economic activity is well documented in the civil war economic literature. However, differential consequences resulting from distinct characteristics of conflicts have not been rigorously studied. Utilizing new conflict data on the 1992-1995 Bosnian civil war from Becker, Devine, Dogo, and Margolin (2018) and DSMP-OLS […]
The Future of Economic Geopolitics: Network Effects in Intercultural Trade
By Joshua Curtis Using a regression discontinuity design on a gravity model of trade among 36 Middle Eastern and East Asian countries between 1980 and 2014, this study demonstrates network effects in trade. A small improvement in trade between subsets of two cultural blocs diminishes the effect of cultural similarity on trade between all members […]
Reforming Turkey’s Judiciary to Meet European Union Standards: A Cost-Benefit Analysis
By Alican Arcasoy Membership in the European Union has long been a goal of the Turkish Government. The economic benefits of access to the single European market are highly attractive for a developing country like Turkey. However, joining the European Union requires a number of costly reforms. The institutional, political, and economic changes demanded by […]
Deciphering Chinese Financing To African Countries
By Gwen Geng The paper considers what attracts Chinese aid and Chinese investment to African countries and what kinds of Chinese financing projects are more likely to have unrevealed financing amount. The main database used is AidData: China’s Official Finance to Africa 2000-2012. It contains 2356 Chinese financing projects to 50 African countries. The results […]
Evaluating the Motivation and Feasibility Theory in Predicting the Onset and Severity of Civil Conflict
By Ishita Chordia This paper looks at 187 countries from 1960-2004 and explores the economic indicators of the onset and the severity of civil conflicts, where civil conflicts are described as small clashes that result in 25 or more battle deaths per conflict. For conflict onset, I test a model that uses the Motivation Theory […]