This paper develops a quantitative model of trade, military conflicts, and defense spending. Lowering trade costs between two countries reduces probability of an armed conflict between them, causing both to cut defense spending. This in turn causes a domino effect on defense spending by other...

There is strong empirical evidence that countries with lower per capita income tend to have smaller trade volumes even after controlling for aggregate income. Furthermore, poorer countries do not just trade less, but have a lower number of trading partners. In this paper, I construct and...

There is little work on the inner workings of journals. What factors seem to affect the ability to publish in a journal? Could simple rules (which are already used by some journals) like the desk rejection of a significant minority of papers, help to streamline the process? At what cost? How...