EconomicsSeminar（2019-14）

Topic: Atlantic Trade and the Decline of Conflict in Europe

Speaker: Yong Song, the University of Melbourne

Time: Tuesday,September 10, 13:30-15:00

Location: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

We use over 250 years of conflict and trade integration data to examine whether the rise of Atlantic trade had a pacifying effect in Europe. The decline in intra-European conflict from the late Middle Ages to World War One has been widely acknowledged. Explanations for it range from the pacifying effect of the Congress of Vienna and the technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. We show that this trend towards pacification started in the late 17th century and therefore cannot be explained by events that occurred in the 19th century. Instead, we offer an alternate explanation that has so far not been empirically explored: access to Atlantic trade. To identify our results, we rely on exogenous variation in wind patterns and cyclone activity over the Atlantic to instrument trade integration with the New World. We find that if two European countries increase their joint integration with the New World by one standard deviation, the probability of them being in conflict will decrease 12.33 percent from the baseline.

Introduction:

Yong Song is a lecturer in the department of Economics at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include Bayesian nonparametric modelling, financial econometrics and general applications of Bayesian techniques. His research papers are published in the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and other journals.

Further information can be found at//sites.google.com/view/ysong1

Your participation is warmly welcomed!