Trade Costs, Conflicts, and Defense Spending∗
Michael Seitz
Alexander Tarasov
Roman Zakharenko
Boston Consulting Group
University of Munich
Higher School of Economics
January 29, 2014
Abstract
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 countries. As a result, both countries and
the rest of the world are better off. We estimate the model using data on trade, conflicts,
and military spending. We find that, after reduction of costs of trade between a pair of
hostile countries, the welfare effect of worldwide defense spending cuts is comparable
in magnitude to the direct welfare gains from trade.
Keywords: general equilibrium, gains from trade, defense spending
JEL Codes: C5, C6, F13, F51, H56
1
Introduction
The traditional trade literature formulates a number of channels through which a country can
gain from trade: the comparative advantage and love for variety effects, the redistribution
of production factors towards more productive firms, the lower markups set by firms are
some of them. In this paper, we quantitatively explore a new potential source of gains from
trade. Recent empirical studies showed that a rise in trade between two countries reduces the
We are thankful to Francesco Caselli, Sergey Izmalkov, Dalia Marin, Thierry Mayer, Igor Muraviev,
Dmitry Pervushin for useful discussions. Denis Deryushkin and Sergei Motin provided helpful research
assistance. Alexander Tarasov gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through SFB/TR 15.
∗
1
Figure 1: Military Spending and Trade
Sources: WorldBank Development Indicators, National Material Capabilities dataset.
probability of an armed conflict between them (e.g. Martin et al. (2008); Hegre et al. (2010)).
Our reasoning is the following: if trade brings about peace, it should also bring about defense
spending cuts across the world, which in turn will bring about even more peace. Figure 1
testifies in favor of this hypothesis: trade volumes have been increasing over the last few
decades, whereas the size of defense spending (proxied by share of military personnel in the
population) has been decreasing during the same period. While in the modern world military
conflicts are quite rare, countries’ defense spending are still substantial and, therefore, this
additional effect of trade openness may have considerable welfare implications. In particular,
we address the following questions in the paper: what is the magnitude of welfare gains due to
reduced conflict probability and defense spending cuts? Is it comparable to the “traditional”
gains from trade?
The quantitative model we develop is based on the following key assumptions. First,
bilateral trade volumes are reduced in case of a military conflict with a certain country,
leading to welfare losses. As a result, countries are less likely to be engaged in a conflict
when they are connected to each other by stronger trade links. Second, the probability of
having a conflict with each of potential opponents affects a country’s decision on how much
to spend on defense. Indeed, for years 1993-2001 (our main dataset), a cross-country measure
of involvement into conflicts has a 32% correlation with the average (over the years) share
2
of the defense spending in the GDP, with a high level of statistical significance. Finally,
the size of defense spending in turn has an impact on the probability of conflict with all
other countries. The model thus features both causal links between trade and conflicts
(conflicts reduce trade, trade prevents conflicts), as well as both causal links between conflicts
and defense spending (anticipation of conflicts causes more defense spending, more defense
spending makes conflicts more likely).
An important corollary of the above assumptions is that increased trade between a pair
of countries will have a multiplicative effect on the global defense spending: it will cut the
defense spending of not only the two trading partners, but also of other countries. Furthermore, the reduction of defense spending of other countries will have a further downward
effect on the defense spending of the two trading partners. For example, increased trade
between Russia and the United States should induce a reduction of defense spending of not
only Russia and the United States, but also the defense spending of other potential opponents of Russia (e.g. China or Eastern European countries) and the United States (e.g.
China or Venezuela); the reduction of China’s defense spending would reduce the defense
spending of other China’s potential opponents (e.g. India), as well as further decrease of
defense spending in Russia and the United States.
To assess the welfare gains of diminished conflict frequency and defense spending cuts, we
need first to clarify the theoretical foundations of such welfare gains. Indeed, in a “perfect”
world of full information, zero transaction costs and fully rational players, all players make
decisions in such a way that aggregate welfare is maximized. Then, according to the envelope
theorem, the overall marginal welfare effects of diminished trade costs are equal to the
direct marginal effect, while the indirect marginal effects (via fewer conflicts and less defense
spending) are zero. At the same time, there is a widespread belief that in a decentralized
equilibrium, there are too many conflicts and too much defense spending, and an effort to
reduce both is desirable; such belief is at the core of peace studies.1 To formalize this idea,
one has to relax one or more “perfect world” assumptions. Martin et al. (2008), for example,
take the asymmetric information approach: every pair of countries bargains over a joint
“peace surplus” where the outside options (i.e. welfare in case of disagreement and conflict
escalation) are private information. In such a setting, suboptimal conflicts may take place.
In this paper, we take another, perhaps more extreme, approach (primarily due to mathematical tractability concerns). We assume prohibitively high transaction costs of negotiation
1
For example, the Peace Research Institute Oslo, a half-century-old think tank, defines its purpose as “to
engage in research concerning the conditions for peaceful relations between nations, groups and individuals.”
3
between governments and, as a result, impossibility of welfare transfers among countries. In
this setting, country A may attack country B even if the welfare gains of the former are
smaller than the welfare losses of the latter, rendering such an attack socially suboptimal.
When strengthened trade links cause A to become more peaceful towards B, then, while the
additional welfare effect of reduced hostility is zero for A due to the envelope theorem, such
effect is positive for B. Moreover, such reduced hostility causes global defense spending cuts,
which further improves the welfare of all countries including A.
To assess the magnitude of these additional gains from trade, we estimate the model
applying what we call the constrained maximum likelihood (i.e. ML with constraints on
the parameter space) estimation, and perform a counterfactual analysis. The empirical
identification of the interdependencies between trade, military conflicts, and defense spending
comes from the structural and functional assumptions in the model. Focusing on some of
the most hostile country pairs, we quantitatively examine how unilateral trade liberalization
between the two countries affects the exporter, importer, and world welfare. We find that in
all experiments both the exporter and the importer gain from unilateral trade liberalization.
Moreover, since more peaceful relations between the countries launch a worldwide wave of
defense spending cuts, the rest of the world gains as well.2 For instance, a reduction in
the cost of exporting from South Korea to North Korea that leads to one dollar rise in the
value of exports raises the welfare of North Korea by $0.1678 (in terms of the compensating
variation of income), the welfare of South Korea by $0.0551. At the same time, the global
welfare gains are $0.7361, including a gain of the United States of $0.2711, and a gain of
Japan of $0.1209. These numbers suggest that the world gains from trade due to defense
spending cuts can be substantial, especially when the two countries that increase trade have
a history of hostility.
To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first one that studies the interplay between trade, conflicts, and defense spending. At the same time, there exist studies of an
interplay of any two of these three. Substantial research, by both economists and political
scientists, has been devoted to the analysis of interrelationship between trade and military
conflicts. Polachek (1980) argues that mutual dependence between trading partners reduces
the probability of a conflict between them. He finds that this hypothesis is consistent with
data. Gowa and Mansfield (1993) show in a game-theoretic model that free trade more likely
takes place within, rather than across, political-military coalitions. They provide empirical
2
In the paper, we assume away the general equilibrium effects of trade liberalization that work through the
adjustment of the cost of labor across countries. As a result, the only effects of unilateral trade liberalization
on the rest of the world are due to reduced hostility and associated defense spending cuts.
4
evidence supporting this prediction. A similar hypothesis is tested in Morrow et al. (1998),
who find that the effect of alliances on trade volumes is uncertain.
Glick and Taylor (2010) study the historic data on trade and conflicts to quantify the
impact of conflicts on trade flows and on welfare. They find that conflicts reduce trade of
not only the belligerent nations, but also of neutral ones, and that the impact of a conflict
on trade is long-lasting and may extend well beyond the conflict itself. Martin et al. (2012)
offer a theory and empirics of regional trade agreements (RTA), in which they argue that
the primary benefits of RTA’s include not only trade creation but also conflict prevention,
and for this reason RTA’s are more likely to be created in places that are more inclined to
both trade and conflict, e.g. Europe. In a closely related paper, Vicard (2012) differentiates
RTA’s by their “depth” (i.e. extent to which the markets were integrated) and concludes
that only deep enough agreements prevent conflicts. Polachek and Seiglie (2007) overviews
a general theory and empirical testing methodology of the trade-conflict nexus.
There are a number of theoretical studies that consider globalization as an important
determinant of the likelihood of conflict. Skaperdas and Syropoulos (2001) explore the
impact of trade openness on arming through the terms of trade effects. Alesina and Spolaore
(2005) examine the link between the size distribution of countries and international conflict.
Alesina and Spolaore (2006) develop a framework with endogenous border formation, defense
spending, and international conflict. In particular, they explore how break-up of countries
affects the likelihood of international and regional conflicts. Acemoglu et al. (2012) construct
a dynamic theory of resource wars and study the interaction between the scarcity of resources
and the incentives for war. Our paper makes a step further in this direction of research by
quantifying the role of trade in international conflict.
The political science literature also explores a link between conflicts and defense spending. One of the first papers examining the impact of defense spending on military conflicts
is Wallace (1979), who finds a strong positive correlation between arms races and the probability of escalating a dispute to war. In particular, he reports that 23 out of 28 disputes
where the countries were involved in an arms race escalated to war. Controlling for other factors effecting dispute escalation (such as history of disputes, relative defense burdens, etc.),
Sample (1998) also finds a strong positive correlation between arms races and the likelihood
of dispute escalation. Kamlet and Mowery (1987) analyze the influence of economic and
political factors on the budgetary priorities of the U.S. in 1955-81. They find that the level
of armed conflict the U.S. was involved in positively affects the level of the budget spending
on defense. Collier and Hoeffler (2002) find that the presence of external threat and/or
5
international war has a strong positive impact on country’s military expenditure. Aizenman
and Glick (2006) also report a positive cross-country correlation between military spending
(as a share of GDP) and external military threat.
To our knowledge, the only study that links trade to defense spending is Acemoglu and
Yared (2010) who argue that the militarist sentiments, proxied by defense spending, lead to
greater isolation of countries and thereby reduce international trade flows. In their paper,
militarism and defense spending are viewed as exogenously driven by public preference. Our
study makes the exact opposite assumptions: defense spending is a fully rational choice made
for a purpose of welfare improvement in case of a conflict; defense spending is cut due to
reduced conflict probability, which is in turn reduced by declining costs of trade.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 develops a theoretical framework.
Section 3 describes the estimation procedure. In Section 4, the description of the data is
provided. Section 5 discusses the results and performs counterfactual experiments. Section
6 concludes.
2
The Model
We consider a world consisting of N asymmetric countries. Each country has two types of
bilateral relations with the other countries: trade relations and political relations, each of
which affects the utility of a representative consumer.
Political relations, which exist at the government level, are comprised of deciding whether
to be in peace or in conflict with every other country. We eliminate the possibility of conflict
between more than two countries due to theoretical complexity and low empirical frequency
of such conflicts in the past sixty years. A military conflict occurs if at least one of the parties
decides to initiate a conflict (to “attack”), which has an impact on countries’ incomes and on
the bilateral trade costs between the countries. The impact on country’s income is in turn
affected by the country’s defense spending, which is funded through a tax on consumers.
The model of trade is based on Armington assumptions that there is perfect competition
between producers of a certain country, products are distinguished by a country of origin,
and individuals consume both domestic and imported varieties. Trade costs are generally
exogenous, but are increased by a factor following an endogenous decision to initiate a
military conflict.
The timing of events in the model is as follows. First, each country makes a defense
spending and a corresponding tax level decision. Second, for every country i and for every
6
potential opponent j 6= i, a pair of stochastic shocks, denoted by ǫij and λij , is realized.
The income shock, ǫij , affects the loss of income of i in case of conflict with j, while the
trade shock, λij , affects the cost of importing from j in case of the same conflict. Third,
each country decides whether to attack each of its potential opponents, and peace/conflict
outcomes are realized. Finally, production, trade, and consumption take place.
We describe the details of the model in the reverse chronological order.
2.1
Consumption
There are Ni different varieties produced in country i. Following the Armington assumptions, Ni is assumed to be exogenous. Each variety is produced in a perfectly competitive
environment, resulting in the producer price of a variety in country i being equal to the
marginal cost of production in that country. We assume that the marginal cost of production in country i is equal to the wage rate divided by the country-specific labor productivity
yi .
For analytical tractability of the model, we ignore the trade general equilibrium effects,
which require exports to be equal to imports via wage adjustment. Instead, we assume that
in each country i the wage rate is equal to the labor productivity yi , thus the domestic price
is equal to unity. An alternative way is to introduce a homogenous freely traded good, the
presence of which will assume away the general equilibrium effects on wages and, thereby,
equalize the marginal cost of production across countries.
Transporting a good from country j to country i incurs iceberg transport costs, τij ≥ 1,
that are exogenous in general, but rise in case of a military conflict between i and j, as
detailed in Section 2.2.1. Thus, the price of a domestically produced variety in country i
is equal τii ≡ 1, while the price of a variety imported from j is equal to τij . As varieties
produced in each country are symmetric, the utility of a representative consumer in country
i can be written as follows:
s
! s−1
X
s−1
,
(1)
Nj qijs
ui = C i
j∈N
where qij is consumption of a variety produced in j, s > 1 is the elasticity of substitution
between varieties, and Ci is a country-specific constant, detailed in Section 3.1. The budget
constraint is then
X
Nj qij τij ≤ ei ,
(2)
j∈N
where ei is the disposable income of a representative consumer in country i.
7
The utility maximization problem implies that the quantity demanded of each variety is
qij = P
The indirect utility is then
ui = C i e i
X
j∈N
Nj τij1−s
ei τij−s
k∈N
Nk τik1−s
1
! s−1
(3)
.
= Ci e i
X
Tij
j∈N
1
! s−1
,
(4)
where Tij ≡ Nj τij1−s is labeled as the trade propensity.
Finally, the trade volumes from j to i are given by
Xij ≡ Li Nj qij τij = Ei P
Tij
k∈N
Tik
,
(5)
where Li is the population size of country i and Ei ≡ ei Li is the aggregate disposable income
in country i. Assuming that the number of varieties Nj and thus trade propensity Tij are
proportional to the exporter economic size, the above model of trade is the simplest one that
results in trade flows as predicted by the gravity equation.
2.2
Effects of Conflicts
In this section, we model the effects of military conflicts on trade flows and countries’ disposable incomes.
2.2.1
Effect on Trade
We assume that a military conflict between i and j increases trade costs between the two
countries and, thereby, reduces the trade propensity, Tij , by a stochastic factor. For every
pair of countries i 6= j, we define wi:j as the conflict status between i and j, endogenous to
the model.3 Specifically, wi:j is equal to unity in case of conflict between country i and j
and zero in case of peace.
We then define the trade propensity between i and j, endogenous to the model, in the
3
Throughout the paper, colon is inserted between subindex elements if the corresponding link is undirected. For example, wi:j ≡ wj:i . Colon is not inserted for directed links, e.g. generically Tij 6= Tji .
8
following way:
Tij =
T (Tij0 ; wi:j ; β; λij )
≡
Tij0
wi:j (λλ̄ij
− 1) + 1 ∈ [0, Tij0 ],
(6)
where Tij0 is the trade propensity in case of peace, λij ∈ [0, 1] is a realization of the trade
shock drawn from the standard uniform distribution, λ̄ > 0 is a parameter to be estimated,
and β is the vector of the parameters in the model to be estimated, to be specified throughout
section 2, such that λ̄ ∈ β.4 As can be seen, a military conflict between i and j reduces the
trade propensity by a country-pair specific factor that depends on λ̄: a higher λ̄ means a
greater reduction of trade due to conflict.
To the best of our knowledge, we are the first ones to assume that the effect of conflict
on trade is stochastic. Other studies (see, for example, Martin et al. (2008)) assume deterministic effects where trade is reduced by a constant factor. The potential heterogeneity of
the effects of conflicts on trade leads to the selection problem: a conflict is more likely to
happen when its effect on trade is small. Thus, if such heterogeneity is not accounted for,
the model will underestimate the effects of conflicts on trade.
The above specification implies that λ̄ governs both the mean and the variance of trade
shocks. Ideally, we would like to estimate them separately. However, since we do not observe
how much trade there would have been without a conflict, identification of both mean and
variance seems complicated if not impossible. Therefore, the stochastic nature of the effect
of conflict on trade is assumed rather than tested.
2.2.2
Effect on Income
In the paper, we assume that the disposable income, ei , depends on conflict statuses as well.
Specifically, we define the disposable income in the following way:
ei = ei (wi , mi ; β; ǫi ) ≡ yi
1 − mi + σ i
X
j6=i
!
wi:j Yj (θ log(mi + α) + zij γ − ǫij ) ,
(7)
where wi ≡ {wi:j }j6=i is the vector of conflict statuses with all opponents of i; mi is i’s
defense spending as a share of its GDP; ǫi ≡ {ǫij }j6=i is the vector of income shocks drawn
from the standard logistic distribution.5 Yi ≡ yi Li is the GDP in the absence of conflicts, zij
4
In the subsequent analysis, we divide all function arguments into four categories: peace-level trade
propensities, country decisions (defense spending and conflicts), parameters of the model to be estimated,
and realizations of shocks. The arguments of different types are separated by semicolon.
ex
5
By the “standard” logistic distribution, we imply a distribution with c.d.f. equal to F (x) = 1+e
x.
9
is the vector of control variables affecting conflict incidence (such as the history of conflicts
between the two countries, geographic and cultural distance between them, etc.). Finally,
{θ, α, γ, σi }i=1..N ∈ β are the parameters to be estimated such that θ > 0, α > 0, σi > 0.
Notice that if wi:j is equal to zero for all j 6= i (that is, country i does not have conflicts),
the disposable income is yi (1 − mi ), i.e. productivity minus the defense tax.
The intuition behind (7) is as follows. Parameters {σi }i=1..N stand for the country-specific
effects that govern the magnitude of income gains or losses of a country in case of conflicts.
The assumption that countries choose their defense spending optimally allows us to identify
{σi }i=1..N from the data. The income gains or losses are assumed to be proportional to the
opponent’s size, Yj : for Cuba, a conflict with the United States may be more costly than
a conflict with the Bahamas.6 The logarithmic dependence of income on defense spending,
mi , is assumed to make ei concave enough with respect to mi and to avoid the problem of
multiple local utility maxima. The parameter α is introduced to justify zero defense spending
by some countries; it also affects the curvature of income with respect to defense spending.
The logistic distribution of income shocks is chosen because (i) since income gains from
conflicts range from positive values (otherwise no one would initiate a conflict) to negative
ones (because most of the time, conflicts do not happen), it is desirable to have the whole
real line as a support of income shocks and (ii) the logistic distribution has an analytically
computable c.d.f. and the integral of c.d.f., both of which are used in the model.
All shocks in the model are assumed to be independent from each other. Identification
of correlation between shocks for the same dyad (ǫij , ǫji , λij , λji ) is impossible due to data
availability; the potential correlation between shocks on different dyads sharing the same
country, e.g. between i : j and i : k, is captured, at least partially, by country fixed effects
σi .
2.3
Transformation of Utility
With all above definitions, we can rewrite the consumer utility (4) as a function of all model
ingredients:
ui = u(Ti ; wi , mi ; β; ǫi , λi ) = Ci e(wi , mi ; β; ǫi )
X
j∈N
6
T (Tij0 ; wi:j ; β; λij )
1
! s−1
,
(8)
It is also natural to assume that welfare gains or losses of a country depend on defense spending of
the opponent. However, since defense spending is endogenous in the model, this assumption would greatly
complicate the analysis. The opponent’s economic size, Yj , among other things, serves as a proxy for the
opponent’s military potential.
10
where Ti ≡ {Tij0 }j∈N and λi ≡ {λij }j6=i . Country i makes a decision on its conflict status
with its opponent j, wij , by comparing its utility from peace and from conflict with j. A
conflict happens if at least one party finds it optimal to initiate a conflict. Typically, it is
the case that at most one member of a dyad is willing to initiate a conflict. In other words,
wij is not necessarily equal to wji , implying that wi:j ≡ max{wij , wji }.
From the expression for the consumer utility in (8) it can be seen that the decision to
initiate a conflict, wij , is interdependent with conflict statuses on other dyads {wi:k }k6=i,j .
This in turn makes the analysis of the model very complex. To make the model more
tractable, we transform (“simplify” ) the utility in two steps, believing that the results will
not be strongly affected.
First, we linearize the utility with respect to the conflict status vector wi , as follows:
ui ≈ u(Ti ; 0, mi ) +
"
X
= Ci yi Si (Ti ) +
j6=i
X
j6=i
"
wi:j [u(Ti ; 1j , mi ; β; ǫij , λij ) − u(Ti ; 0, mi )]
− Ci mi yi Si (Ti ) +
#
wi:j {(1 + σi Yj (θ log(mi + α) + zij γ − ǫij )) Sij (Ti ; β; λij ) − Si (Ti )}
X
j6=i
#
wi:j {Sij (Ti ; β; λij ) − Si (Ti )} ,
(9)
where 0 is a N × 1 vector of zeros, 1j is a vector of same size with unity corresponding
1
P
0 s−1
is the love-of-variety component
to country j, and zeros elsewhere; Si (Ti ) ≡
T
j ij
1
P
0
0 λ̄ s−1
of utility in case of total peace, while Sij (Ti ; β; λij ) ≡
is the same
k6=j Tik + Tij λij
component in case of conflict with j only. Note that if country i has no conflicts or has a
conflict with only one other country,7 the linearized utility is equal to the original utility.
In the second step, we simplify (9) further by assuming that the total cost of defense
spending, as presented by the last line of (9), does not depend on the conflict incidence and
is equal to −Ci mi yi Si (·). The defense spending mi is typically a small fraction of GDP, while
conflict incidence wi:j is a rare occurrence, hence the interaction between the two seems to
be a negligible issue. At the same time, such simplification greatly improves the analytical
tractability of the model.
7
. . . which is true for the vast majority of country-year observations: no conflicts in 1038 out of 1629
country-year observations, one conflict in 379 cases, and more than one conflict in the remaining 212 cases.
11
Thus, we end up with the following “linearized” utility:
uLi (Ti ; wi , mi ; β; ǫi , λi ) ≡ Ci yi (1 − mi )Si (Ti )
X
+ C i yi
wi:j {(1 + σi Yj (θ log(mi + α) + zij γ − ǫij )) Sij (Ti ; β; λij ) − Si (Ti )}
(10)
j6=i
2.4
Attack Decisions
In this section, we model attack decisions made by each country with respect to its potential
opponents. Country i decides to initiate a conflict with j 6= i (in this case, wij is equal to
one and, therefore, wi:j is equal to one as well) if it is better off from doing so. In other
words, the utilities under having a conflict with j and without are compared. From (10), it
is straightforward to see that the difference between the welfare in case of a conflict and in
case of no conflict is given by (note that, due to linearization, all terms that are not relevant
to the pair {i, j} are cancelled out)
uLi (·; 1j , mi ; ·) − uLi (·; 0, mi ; ·) = Ci yi {(1 + σi Yj (θ log(mi + α) + zij γ − ǫij )) Sij (·) − Si (·)} .
Thus, country i initiates a conflict if
8
(1 + σi Yj (θ log(mi + α) + zij γ − ǫij )) Sij (Ti ; β; λij ) ≥ Si (Ti ).
As can be seen, the attack decision depends on the realizations of the income shock, ǫij ,
and the trade shock, λij . Specifically, the conflict takes place iff ǫij ≤ ǫ⋆ij , where ǫ⋆ij is the
income shock cutoff given by
ǫ⋆ij (Ti ; mi ; β; λij )
Si (Ti )
1
≡ θ log(mi + α) + zij γ +
1−
.
σ i Yj
Sij (Ti ; β; λij )
(11)
The income shock cutoff increases with country i’s defense spending. The greater is the
defense spending, the higher the probability of initiating a conflict. The income shock cutoff
decreases with the peace-level trade propensity with j, Tij0 , as the losses from a conflict with
j are greater when there are more trade opportunities. It increases with the peace-level trade
8
From a game-theoretic standpoint, there exists another equilibrium: if country i is certain that it will
be attacked by j (wji = 1 with probability one), its own decision wij does not affect anything, so i may
choose to attack j with certainty, as well, regardless of the value of ǫij . This equilibrium however is not
trembling-hand-proof: if j attacks i with probability slightly less than one, this equilibrium falls apart. We
ignore this equilibrium throughout the analysis. We thank Sergei Izmalkov for raising the issue.
12
propensities with other countries, Tik0 . The idea behind is that if a country trades intensively
with countries other than j, it is less dependent on trade with j and thus more likely to
engage in a conflict. This relationship between trade with the rest of the world and conflict
incidence has a strong empirical support (see Martin et al. (2008)).
How does the income shock cutoff depend on the opponent’s size, Yj ? One can show
P
that, if j is a “small country” for i, i.e. Tij0 constitutes a small fraction of k Tik0 , then the
term in square brackets in (11) is approximately proportional to Tij0 , i.e. can be presented
as kTij0 + o(Tij0 ) for some k < 0. Assuming further that Tij0 is proportional to the exporter’s
economic size Yj , we have that ǫ⋆ij (·) (marginally) does not depend on Yj , and the opponent
size (marginally) does not matter for the decision to attack them.
Note that ǫ⋆ij is a realization of a random variable, as it depends on the realization of λij .
We can calculate the probability that i initiates a conflict with j as follows:
Pij (Ti ; mi ; β) =
Z
F (ǫ⋆ij (Ti ; mi ; β; λ))dλ = Eλ F (ǫ⋆ij (Ti ; mi ; β; λ)),
(12)
λ∈[0,1]
where F (·) is the c.d.f. of the income shock, and Eλ is the expectation over appropriate
shocks, not to be confused with the aggregate disposable income Ei . Finally, the utility (10)
can be rewritten as
uLi (Ti ; wi , mi ; β; ǫi , λi ) = Ci yi (1 − mi )Si (Ti ) +
X
wi:j uLij (Ti ; mi ; β; ǫij , λij ),
(13)
j6=i
where
uLij (Ti ; mi ; β; ǫij , λij ) = Ci yi σi Yj Sij (Ti ; β; λij ) ǫ⋆ij (Ti ; mi ; β; λij ) − ǫij
is the additional utility of i in case of conflict with j.
2.5
Defense Spending Decisions
The government in each country chooses its military spending, mi , by maximizing the expected utility, before the realizations of ǫij and λij are known, and before conflict statuses
are realized. The latter is equal to (irrelevant function arguments are dropped for brevity):
uE
i (T; m; β) = Ci yi (1 − mi )Si (Ti )
"
Z
X
L
+
Pji (·)Eǫ,λ uij (·; ǫ, λ) + (1 − Pji (·))
j6=i
13
(14)
1
λ=0
Z
ǫ⋆ij (·;λ)
ǫ=−∞
#
uLij (·; ǫ, λ)dǫdλ .
Here T = {Ti }i=1..N and m = {mi }i=1..N . The first term in the second line of (14) describes
the expected additional utility due to possible attack by j. The second term in the second
line of (14) represents the expected utility due to possible attack of j by i.
Thanks to the assumption that the mean of income shock ǫij is zero, we have the following:
Eǫ,λ uLij (·; ǫ, λ) = Ci yi σi Yj Eλ Sij (·; λ)ǫ⋆ij (·; λ) ,
while
Z
1
λ=0
R
Z
ǫ⋆ij (·;λ)
ǫ=−∞
uLij (·; ǫ, λ)dǫdλ = Ci yi σi Yj Eλ Sij (·; λ)F F (ǫ⋆ij (·; λ)) ,
where F F (x) ≡ y∈(−∞,x) F (y)dy.
To determine the optimal defense spending, the government in country i maximizes (14)
∂ǫ⋆ (Ti ;mi ;β;λi )
with respect to mi taking {mj }j6=i as given. Given the fact that ij ∂mi
= miθ+α , the
first derivative of (14) with respect to mi is given by
∂uE
i (T; m; β)
= Ci yi
∂mi
!
P
θ
Y
P
(·)E
S
(·;
λ)
−Si (Ti ) + mσii+α
λ ij
j6=i j ji
.
P
σi θ
+ mi +α j6=i Yj (1 − Pji (·))Eλ Sij (·; λ)F (ǫ⋆ij (·; λ))
(15)
We arrive at the following set of the first-order conditions:
∂uE
i (T; m; β)
∂mi
(
= 0, mi > 0,
≤ 0, mi = 0.
(16)
Note that, while the marginal effectiveness of defense spending, miθ+α , decreases with mi , the
probability of a conflict increases via a rise in ǫ⋆ij (Ti ; mi ; β; λij ) and, therefore, the concavity
of the utility with respect to mi is not guaranteed. While estimating the parameters, we
verify the second-order conditions of optimal defense spending for all countries.
To prevent the problem of overidentification, we assume that for countries that spent
zero on defense, the parameter σi is equal to a pre-defined value, low enough such that the
constraints (16) for these countries hold.
For better numerical results, we modify the remaining constraints on the parameter space
(16) by dividing both sides by Ci yi S(Ti ) > 0, adding unity, and taking logs, to arrive at the
14
following, ∀i : mi > 0:
Gi (β) ≡ log σi + log θ − log(mi + α) − log Si (·)
(17)
!
X
+ log
Yj Pji (·; β)Eλ Sij (·; β; λ) + (1 − Pji (·; β))Eλ Sij (·; β; λ)F (ǫ⋆ij (·; β; λ)) = 0.
j6=i
By G(β) we denote the vector of all constraints described by (17).
In the above analysis, we have formulated the probability of country j being attacked
by country i and examined its dependence on the parameters in the model (see (12)). We
have also established the conditions that determine the choice of military spending made by
countries, (17). The proposed framework has several empirically plausible properties that
are at the core of the analyzed model:
• Countries spend more on defense if a conflict is more likely. This follows from the fact
that the optimal mi solving (17) rises with Pji and with ǫ⋆ij . Conversely, a conflict is
more likely if countries spend more on defense. That is, Pij rises with mi .
• A rise in the defense spending of a certain country increases the probability of a conflict
with its opponents and, therefore, increases the defense spending of all other countries.
In other words, an arms race takes place.
• Greater trade volumes result in larger welfare losses in case of conflict making military
conflicts less likely. That is, Pij decreases with Tij .
In the next section, we fit the model to the data on bilateral military conflicts, countries’
military spending, and bilateral trade volumes.
3
3.1
Fitting Model to Data
Calibration
We borrow the value for the elasticity of substitution, s, from the existing trade literature.
Specifically, we choose s = 4, which is the mean value of the elasticities estimated in Broda
and Weinstein (2006).
The peace-level trade propensities Tij0 were calibrated as follows. First, from (5), it follows
that
T̂ij
T̂ik
=
X̂ij
,
X̂ik
where X̂ij is the empirically observed trade volume while T̂ij is the trade
15
propensity under the empirically observed conflict status. In other words, the ratio of trade
propensities equals the ratio of trade volumes, ∀i, j, k. Second, the level of trade propensities
is immaterial: multiplying T̂ij , ∀j by some importer-specific constant ki will not change any
results in the model. For this reason, we choose the benchmark level of empirical trade
propensities such that they are numerically equal to empirically observed trade volumes X̂ij ,
i.e. T̂ij = X̂ij , ∀i, j.
Second, the relationship between T̂ij and the peace-level trade propensity Tij0 can be
determined by (6). One problem with this relationship is that the magnitude of the trade
shock λij is unknown, therefore there is no way to back out Tij0 precisely even if the parameter
λ̄ is known. Our method of handling the problem is to find Tij0 by calculating the expected
(with respect to λij ) trade propensity, conditional on empirically observed conflict status
and on parameter values, and equating it to the empirically observed trade volumes:
!
λ̄
⋆
F
(ǫ
(T
;
m
;
β;
λ))dλ
λ
1
i
i
ij
.
+ ŵji
X̂ij = Eλ (T̂ij |ŵij , ŵji , β) = Tij0 1 − ŵij − ŵji + ŵij λR
⋆
F (ǫij (Ti ; mi ; β; λ))dλ
λ̄ + 1
λ
(18)
λ̄
In (18), the ratio of the two integrals is the expectation of λij , conditional on λij being low
1
enough so that i chooses to attack j. The last term λ̄+1
is the unconditional expectation
λ̄
of λij : the decision of j to strike i does not depend on λij . The system of equations (18),
for every trade link ij, is used to find peace trade propensities Tij0 , ∀i, ∀j 6= i. Note that
the parameter vector β is also unknown and is estimated as described in section 3.2; the
estimate of β itself depends on the values of Tij0 . We re-estimate Tij0 and β iteratively until
convergence.
P
To meet the budget-balancedness condition j Xij0 = Ei = (1 − mi )Yi , that the total
expenditure on goods imported from all countries (including domestically produced goods)
equals the total disposable income, we set the “self-trade” propensity equal to the difference
between the disposable income and the sum of imports. By assumption, a country cannot
have conflicts with itself, hence the peace-level self-trade propensity equals its empirical
P
counterpart: Tii0 = T̂ii = Êi − j6=i X̂ij . We proxy Êi by (1 − mi )Ŷi , which is the most simple
(but not the most accurate, cf.(7) approximation.
The productivity of a country Yi is set equal to its observed GDP Ŷi . For countries
that actually had conflicts, such calibration has an obvious shortcoming, since throughout
the model we assume that conflicts move the actual realization of income away from the
peace-level productivity Yj . Thus, we sacrifice some realism for the sake of mathematical
tractability of the model.
R
16
Finally, the utility scale parameter Ci is chosen such Ci Si (Ti ) = 1. This way, the utility
in case of peace among all countries is numerically equal to disposable income ei , thus a
utility change due to changing model parameters is numerically equal to the compensating
variation of income. For this reason, in the policy experiment section of this paper, all
marginal changes in utility due to changing trade costs are nominated in dollars.
3.2
Estimation
The set of parameters in the model we estimate is β = θ, α, λ̄, γ, {σi }i=1..N . We estimate
the unknown parameters using the maximum likelihood estimator with constraints on the
parameter space. In particular, we fit the predicted probabilities of conflict initiation (12)
to actually observed conflict initiation status. In doing so, we account for a discrepancy
between the theoretical model and the actually available data. Specifically, the theoretical
model predicts that a pair of countries i and j decide independently whether or not to attack
each other, meaning that it is possible that both may decide to attack (wij = wji = 1). In
the data however, as described in detail in section 4, only one side may be a conflict initiator,
thus ŵij + ŵji ≤ 1, where ŵij and ŵji are observed in the data conflict initiation statuses. To
reconcile the discrepancy, we assume that, if both countries decide to attack, each of them
becomes the “observed” attacker with probability 12 . With this assumption, the theoretical
probabilities of observed outcomes are as follows (dropping some function arguments):
Pr(ŵij = 0, ŵji = 0) = (1 − Pij (·; β))(1 − Pji (·; β)),
1
Pr(ŵij = 1, ŵji = 0) = Pij (·; β)(1 − Pji (·; β)) + Pij (·; β)Pji (·; β),
2
1
Pr(ŵij = 0, ŵji = 1) = (1 − Pij (·; β))Pji (·; β) + Pij (·; β)Pji (·; β).
2
The corresponding loglikelihood function can be then written as follows:
L(β) =
XX
i
j6=i
1
ŵij log(Pij (·; β)) + ŵji log 1 − Pij (·; β) + (1 − ŵij − ŵji ) log(1 − Pij (·; β)) .
2
(19)
Since in the model country’s military spending is endogenous and chosen to maximize its
expected utility function, we use the conditions implied by (17), for countries with positive
defense spending, as restrictions on the parameter space in the estimation procedure. In this
17
case, the estimate of β is
β̂ = arg max L(β̃)
β̃
subject to (17) and to zero lower bounds on θ, α, and σi . Appendix A details the computational algorithm and the asymptotic variance of the estimate.
The identification of θ and α comes from the relationship between conflict incidence
and military spending in the data. Parameter λ̄ is identified from the relationship between
military conflict incidence and trade volumes found in the data (see, for instance, Martin
et al. (2008)). Finally, {σi } , ∀i : mi > 0 can be identified due to the presence of the
constraints in the estimation procedure. Note also that the above estimation strategy allows
us to disentangle all the interdependencies between trade volumes, military conflicts, and
defense spending. Indeed, the structure of the model implies that the probability that i
initiates a conflict with j, Pij (Ti ; mi ; β), depends on the exogenous controls, the parameters
in the model, the exogenous trade propensities in case of peace, and the endogenous defense
spending mi . That is, the only source of endogeneity is the presence of mi . However, from
(17), mi can be implicitly expressed in terms of the exogenous variables (and parameters) and
the probabilities of initiating a conflict. This in turn allows us to control for endogeneity
(arising from the endogenous nature of conflicts and defense spending) in the estimation
procedure.
3.3
Additional Adjustments
The availability of data suggests some adjustments to the theoretical model and to the
estimation method described above.
First, given the availability of data on multiple years, we use them all while estimating
the parameters in the model. We treat observations from different years as independent ones
and ignore potential autocorrelation of shocks for the following reasons: (i) while ignored
autocorrelation leads to inconsistent short-term predictions, it does not compromise longterm effects that are our primary goal, (ii) autocorrelation of shocks would complicate the
model beyond reason, especially given the discrete nature of the dependent variable.
Second, given the availability of data on conflict dates, we can expand the support of
ŵij from {0, 1} (conflict, no conflict) to the entire unit interval (fraction of the year with
active conflict). Intuitively, a conflict that lasted one day has a smaller effect on trade than a
conflict that lasted the entire year. Empirically, there is indeed a strong correlation between
conflict length and trade (for those observations with wi:j > 0). While such adjustment
18
does not require any changes in the estimation procedure, it does require some theoretical
justification. To justify intermediate values of ŵij , we assume that shocks in the model are
realized every day rather than once per year, and every country i updates every day its
decision of whether to be in conflict with every other country j.
To make sure that the first-order conditions of optimal defense (16) hold for any country
in any given year, we allowed the parameters σi to vary across years, effectively making them
country-year fixed effects.
Most expectations in the model over λ are not computable analytically and had to be
approximated numerically. To do so, we define a grid of points for λ, such that the change
of c.d.f. between any two consecutive points is the same, and approximate the integral by
the average value of the integrand across the grid points. The number of grid points was
driven by computer memory constraints and set equal to 25.
4
Data
In this section, we describe the data we use to estimate the model. We have dropped several
countries due to data availability concerns; the full list is provided in Appendix B.1. The
remaining sample consists of 181 countries, observed in 9 years as detailed below.
4.1
Conflicts
Our primary source of data is the dyadic Militarized Interstate Dispute dataset, version 3.10
(Ghosen et al., 2004). The dataset provides the list of all “militarized interstate disputes”:
i.e., “conflicts in which one or more states threaten, display, or use force against one or
more other states” for years 1993-2001. For each conflict, the dataset includes the list of all
country pairs which had a hostility between each other. For every such country pair, we use
information on the start and end dates of the hostility, the level of hostility on a scale from
1 to 5, and a flag for the initiator of the conflict.
Although data on earlier conflicts (from 1951 onward) is also available, we do not use
it because of lower quality of the data: unlike MID v3.10, it does not provide information
for every possible pair of countries for conflicts with multiple participants. Additionally, the
pre-1993 world was characterized by quite a different political map; some auxiliary data (e.g.
GDP for Socialist countries) is not easily available for those years. Nevertheless, the data
on early conflicts is used as a control variable as described in section 4.5.1.
19
Following Martin et al. (2008), by a “conflict” we consider only conflicts with hostility
level of 3 (Display of Force) and above (Use of Force, War) – overall, 483 out of 512 conflict
observations meet this criterion. The empirical conflict status ŵij is computed as fraction of
the year that i and j were in a conflict, such that i was the conflict originator (in the data,
one and only one member of a dyad may be an originator).
4.2
GDP
The gross domestic product is measured in current U.S. dollars. The data is from the World
Development Indicators of the World Bank. The missing observations were filled by data
from IMF’s World Economic Outlook. For North Korea which had no GDP data in any year,
we employed the 1991 estimate of 22.9 billion USD, given in the Wikipedia article “Economy
of North Korea.” The observations that were still missing were replaced by values predicted
by the regression
log
GDPit
Lit
= δ0 + δ1 log
PECit
Lit
+ δi + δt + νit ,
where PECit is Primary Energy Consumption as reported by National Material Capabilities
dataset, version 4.0 (Singer et al., 1972); δi is the country fixed effect, δt is the year fixed
effect, νit is the residual, and year t ranges from 1981 to 2007.
4.3
Defense Spending
The primary source of information on defense spending is Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI), which reports such spending as a share of GDP for a wide
range of countries and years. The missing data was filled by the calculated ratio of defense
expenditure to GDP, where the former is taken from above mentioned National Material
Capabilities dataset. The correlation between the two sources is approximately 66%.
For some country-year observations, e.g. Cuba in 1993, defense spending observations
were missing. Out of 181 × 9 = 1629 country-year observations, 45 had such missing defense
data. We illustrate the handling of such observations by continuing the Cuba example. To
calculate the probability that Cuba attacks other countries in 1993, zero defense spending
was assumed; such probability however was only used to fit the constraint (16) for countries
other than Cuba; it was excluded from the loglikelihood function (19).
As mentioned earlier, we also do not verity the first-order condition (16) for countries
20
that spend zero on defense (as well as for countries with missing defense data), and a corresponding σi is assumed equal to a default value. In all, we have 1490 out of 1629 country-year
observations with positive defense spending, each accompanied by an unknown value of σi
and by a constraint (17).
4.4
Trade
The primary source of trade data is Bilateral Trade dataset, version 3.0, by Barbieri and
Pollins (2009). The missing data was filled using Feenstra et al. (2005), with correlation between the two sources exceeding 99%. While calculating the attack probability, the missing
observations were replaced by zeros. However, if a trade data X̂ij was missing, the corresponding attack probability Pij was dropped from the loglikelihood function (19). In all,
46280 country-country-year observations out of 181 × 180 × 9 = 293220 had missing data on
trade.
After excluding missing trade and defense data, 239528 country-country-year observations
out of 293220 were included into the loglikelihood function.
4.5
Control Variables
Besides the constant, there are four sets of control variables: conflict history, contiguity,
other distance variables, time trend. Below we describe the first three.
4.5.1
Conflict History
A major predictor of conflicts between a pair of countries is preceding history of conflicts between them. The history of conflicts between countries i and j is measured as the total length
of conflicts of hostility levels 3-5 between years 1951 and 1992, as reported by Militarized
Interstate Dispute dataset, version 2.0 (Zeev, 2005). Since the political map of the world has
considerably changed in the early 1990s, a number of adjustments had to be made. Conflicts
between countries that later merged into one (e.g. between Federal Republic of Germany and
German Democratic Republic) were dropped. Conflicts between such countries and third
countries were added to the history of conflicts of their successors (e.g. a conflict between
GDR and USA contributed to a history of conflicts between modern Germany and USA).
For countries that split into several countries, their conflict history was carried over to the
main successor country (e.g. a conflict between USSR and USA contributed to a history of
conflicts between modern Russia and USA).
21
To account for possible nonlinear effects of past conflicts on modern conflicts, we add
conflict history squared to the set of control variables.
4.5.2
Contiguity
The data on geographic contiguity in taken from Direct Contiguity dataset, version 3.10
(Stinnett et al., 2002). The dataset identifies five types of contiguity, from most proximate
type-1 (countries separated by a land or river border) to most distant type-5 (countries
separated by 150-400 miles of water); we include a dummy for each of the five contiguity
types.
4.5.3
Other Distance Variables
An additional source of information on distance, both geographic and cultural, is the GeoDist
database (Mayer and Zignago, 2011). We use the following variables from the dataset: log of
(population-weighted) geographic distance between countries, a dummy for common official
language, a dummy for colonial link ever between the two countries, and a dummy for a pair
of countries having a common colonizer after 1945.
5
Results
In this section, we present the results of the estimation procedure and perform counterfactual
analysis.
5.1
The Parameter Estimates
The parameter estimates are reported in Table 1. Note that we have estimated the values
of logs of θ, α, and σi , because these parameters must be positive. The following control
variables are significant: history of conflicts and its square, contiguity of types 1 and 2,
distance between countries, linguistic and colonial links. Almost all significant parameters
have the expected sign: the effect of conflict history on conflict incidence is positive and
concave, the effect of geographic proximity is positive, the effect of linguistic proximity is
negative, while almost all measures of past political ties have a positive effect on conflict
incidence.
The estimate of λ̄ implies an unconditional reduction of trade, following a conflict, by a
22
Table 1: Estimates of the model parameters
Parameter
log θ
log α
λ̄
constant
conflict history
history squared
type-1 contiguity
type-2 contiguity
type-3 contiguity
type-4 contiguity
type-5 contiguity
log weighted distance
common official language
colonial link ever
common colonizer after 1945
time trend
σi
# of observations
loglikelihood
Estimate (Std.Err.)
-0.5899 (0.1772)
-6.6904 (1.4722)
1.9221 (1.9411)
1.0064 (0.8060)
0.4110 (0.0329)
-0.0109 (0.0012)
1.7532 (0.2427)
1.9168 (0.4296)
-0.3651 (1.8584)
0.8865 (0.4715)
0.0639 (0.5247)
-0.8117 (0.0906)
0.2990 (0.1649)
1.3872 (0.2306)
-0.7814 (0.2395)
-0.0145 (0.0279)
yes
239528
-1330.48
factor of 3.9 The estimate of α implies that the marginal effectiveness of defense spending
by a country that spends nothing on defense is about 40 times higher than that of a country
that spends on defense 5% of its GDP; such sharp concavity of welfare with respect to
defense spending ensured the second-order condition of optimal defense spending for every
country-year observation.
Given the estimates, for any country we can calculate the probability of being attacked
by any other country in any given year. The highest such probability was 65.35%, that Israel
attacks Jordan in 1993. The lowest probability was 10−59 , that Tuvalu attacks Fiji in 2001.
Overall, the predicted probabilities are consistent with subjective expectations. For example,
for the United States in 2001, the greatest threats of attack came from Russia (2.47%),10
North Korea (1.77%), and China (0.67%). For Israel in 2001, the top threats were Jordan
(53.88%), Lebanon (29.42%), and Egypt (8.55%).11
9
Given the fact that the prospect of trade reduction prevents some conflicts, the actual trade reduction
is smaller than the unconditional reduction.
10
The high estimate is based on a long history of conflicts between Russia and the USA.
11
Palestine was not included into the data, thus the Palestinian threat for Israel was not accounted for.
23
5.2
Counterfactuals
With these results, we ask the primary question of the paper – how increased trade affects
conflicts and defense spending. For that purpose, we define a counterfactual experiment as
follows: reduced trade costs τij and a corresponding increase of trade propensity Tij0 such
that the total-peace level of trade Xij0 increases by one dollar, assuming constant defense
spending and constant trade propensities on other dyads. Note that, due to the substitution
effect, a rise of trade propensity Tij0 causes imports to i from countries other than j to drop.
Using the assumption that the initial peace-level trade propensity Tij0 is numerically equal
to Xij0 , and taking into accountP(5), we can show that the new peace-level trade propensity is
T0
Tij1 = Tij0 + ∆T , where ∆T ≡ P k Tik0 = EiE−Ti 0 is considered to be a marginal change in trade
k6=j ik
ij
volume. We can also show that the new peace-level trade volumes are Xij1 = Xij0 +1+o(∆T ),
0
Xik
12
1
0
as defined, and that Xik
= Xik
− Ei −X
0 + o(∆T ), ∀k 6= j.
ij
In the present paper, we report the results of three counterfactual experiments. In experiment #1, the importer (country i) is Jordan and the exporter (country j) is Israel. In
experiment #2, the importer is North Korea and the exporter is South Korea. In experiment
#3, the importer is Russia and the exporter is the United States of America. In all three
cases, the experiment year was 2001, the last year of available data.
Next, we outline the effects of such trade cost changes.
5.2.1
Effects on defense spending
The change in defense spending by each country can be calculated by totally differentiating
the first-order condition of optimal defense spending given by (16) with respect to m and
k
:
Tij and by solving for the vector of ∂m
∂Tij
dm1
... = −
dmN
∂ 2 uE
1
∂m21
...
∂ 2 uE
1
∂m1 ∂mN
...
...
...
∂ 2 uE
N
∂mN ∂m1
...
∂ 2 uE
N
∂m2N
−1
∂ 2 uE
1
∂m1 ∂Tij
...
∂ 2 uE
N
∂mN ∂Tij
∆T.
Since the typical response to reduced trade costs is reduction (rather than increase) of defense
spending worldwide, and since the natural lower bound on defense spending is zero, countries
that already spent zero on defense were not allowed to adjust their spending.
T 0 +∆T
1
0
1
1
− Xij
=
To show the result for Xij
, observe that Xij
= Ei Eiji +∆T , thus Xij
1
1 + o(∆T ). Likewise, we can show the result for Xik , k 6= j.
12
24
0
(Ei −Tij
)∆T
Ei +∆T
=
Ei
Ei +∆T
=
Table 2: Defense spending cuts by selected countries following reduction of costs of imports
to Jordan from Israel in 2001.
Country
United States of America
United Kingdom
Egypt
Jordan
Israel
Saudi Arabia
WORLD
Defense spending change, $ (Std.Err.)
-0.0031 (0.0025)
-0.0019 (0.0013)
-0.0026 (0.0016)
-0.0280 (0.0106)
-0.0477 (0.0217)
-0.0061 (0.0037)
-0.0965 (0.0424)
Table 3: Defense spending cuts by selected countries following reduction of costs of imports
to North Korea from South Korea in 2001.
Country
United States of America
United Kingdom
China
North Korea
South Korea
Japan
WORLD
Defense spending change, $ (Std.Err.)
-0.0442 (0.0261)
-0.0015 (0.0011)
-0.0028 (0.0021)
-0.0481 (0.0231)
-0.0238 (0.0142)
-0.0196 (0.0144)
-0.1503 (0.0771)
Tables 2, 3, 4 report defense spending cuts by various countries in the two specified
experiments. The standard errors of the estimates are due to the standard errors of the
estimated model parameters. In all three experiments, the United States and the United
Kingdom were among the top respondents to changing political arena, which is a consequence
of high involvement of both into global political affairs. In all three experiments, the defense
spending cuts by third countries (i.e. countries other than the importer and the exporter)
constitute at least a quarter of the global cuts.
5.2.2
Welfare Implications
Below we propose a classification of all welfare effects of increasing Tij0 on the “aggregate”
expected utility Lk uE
k , ∀k. In formulas below, we show the marginal effects, to be multiplied
by a factor of ∆T . The expected welfare is affected both directly and via changing defense
spending; moreover, the direct welfare effect for the importer i is qualitatively different from
that for all other countries. For this reason, we divide welfare effects into three groups:
direct effect for importer, direct effect for other countries, and indirect effect via changing
25
Table 4: Defense spending cuts by selected countries following reduction of costs of imports
to Russia from the United States of America in 2001.
Country
United States of America
United Kingdom
France
Russia
China
Japan
WORLD
Defense spending change, $ (Std.Err.)
-0.0816 (0.0408)
-0.0020 (0.0013)
-0.0010 (0.0008)
-0.0133 (0.0080)
-0.0016 (0.0010)
-0.0067 (0.0040)
-0.1152 (0.0537)
defense spending for all countries.
• Direct effect on the importer. Following a decrease in trade costs and associated rise
in trade propensity Tij0 , the importer i experiences, among other things, an expansion
of the opportunity set, changed expected welfare due to possible attack by neighbors,
and changed expected welfare due to possible own attack on neighbors. In math,
∂Si (Ti )
Li ∂uE
i (T; m; β)
= Ci Yi (1 − mi )
0
∂Tij
∂Tij0
X
∂ǫ⋆ik (Ti ; ·; λ)
∂Sik (Ti ; β; λ) ⋆
ǫik (·; λ) + Sik (·; λ)
Yk Pki (·)Eλ
+ C i Yi σ i
0
∂T
∂Tij0
ij
k6=i
X
∂Sik (Ti ; β; λ)
∂ǫ⋆ik (Ti ; ·; λ)
⋆
⋆
+ C i Yi σ i
Yk (1 − Pki (·))Eλ
F F (ǫik (·; λ)) + Sik (·; λ)
F (ǫik (·; λ))
∂Tij0
∂Tij0
k6=i
(20)
1
Due to the assumptions made in Section 3.1, the first line in (20) is merely s−1
, and
is equal to the love of variety welfare effect equivalent to that of conventional trade
models. It is the only effect that exists even in the absence of conflicts. The second
line of (20) is the change in utility associated with conflicts initiated by neighbors
of i. Finally, the third line of (20) is the change in utility associated with conflicts
initiated by i itself. Note that the second and the third lines are typically negative
for k = j, as they reflect by how much the gains from trade are reduced by possible
conflict incidence.
• Peaceful importer effect. Changing trade patterns make the importer i more dependent on the exporter j, which reduces the probability that i attacks j. Thereby, j’s
26
expected welfare is increasing, which is labeled as peaceful importer effect. Note that
substitution of trade flows causes i to import less from other exporters k 6= i, j and
thereby makes i more hostile towards k. Thus, the peaceful importer effect for k 6= i, j
is negative. The peaceful importer effect does not apply to the importer i itself. In
math, the peaceful importer effect is equal to (dropping function arguments)
∂Pik (Ti ; ·)
∂Pik (Ti ; ·)
∂uE
Lk k
= C k Yk σ k Yi
Eλ Ski (·; λ) (ǫ⋆ki (·; λ) − F F (ǫ⋆ki (·; λ))) .
0
0
∂Pik
∂Tij
∂Tij
• Defense spending cuts by neighbors. Reduced hostility of i towards j causes both i and
j to cut their defense spending, which makes both less hostile towards each other and
towards third countries, which causes further defense spending cuts worldwide. While
the welfare effect of own defense spending cuts is zero due to the envelope theorem,
the effect of neighbors’ cuts is positive. In math, the welfare effect of defense spending
cuts by neighbors for country k is equal to
Lk
X ∂uE (T; m; β) ∂mn
k
∂mn
n
∂Tij0
,
where
∂uE
∂Pnk (·; mn ; ·)
k
= C k Yk σ k Y n
Eλ Skn (·; λ) (ǫ⋆kn (·; λ) − F F (ǫ⋆kn (·; λ))) .
∂mn
∂mn
Tables 5, 6, 7 report the welfare effects for the three experiments of this paper.
The defense cuts by neighbors effect is truly global. In all three experiments, Brazil is
thousands of kilometers away from both exporters and importers, but is one of top beneficiaries, primarily due to defense cuts by the United States which is highly involved in global
affairs.
The three experiments show that declining defense spending may account for a half or
more of all welfare effects of declining trade costs, so we can conclude that the defense
spending consequences of changing trade costs cannot be ignored.
We can also split the defense cuts by neighbors effect by every particular neighbor. For
example, in the Korean experiment (Table 6), the American welfare gain of $0.2711 includes
$ 0.0040 due to defense spending cuts by Canada, $0.0019 due to Mexico, $0.0026 due to
the United Kingdom, $0.0011 due to France, $0.0101 due to Russia, $0.0235 due to China,
$0.2083 due to defense spending cuts by North Korea, $0.0070 due to South Korea, and
27
Table 5: Welfare effects for selected countries following reduction of costs of imports to
Jordan from Israel in 2001.
Country
Welfare effect, $ (Std.Err.)
Direct effect on importer
Jordan
0.1285 (0.1350)
Peaceful importer effect
Israel
0.0714 (0.0373)
Saudi Arabia
-0.0011 (0.0004)
Defense cuts by neighbors
United States of America 0.0292 (0.0172)
Brazil
0.0034 (0.0018)
United Kingdom
0.0151 (0.0075)
France
0.0042 (0.0023)
Spain
0.0016 (0.0010)
Germany
0.0045 (0.0027)
Italy
0.0056 (0.0030)
Iran
0.0015 (0.0008)
Turkey
0.0020 (0.0011)
Egypt
0.0109 (0.0052)
Syria
0.0021 (0.0009)
Lebanon
0.0018 (0.0009)
Israel
0.0100 (0.0053)
Saudi Arabia
0.0294 (0.0123)
United Arab Emirates
0.0028 (0.0014)
Japan
0.0041 (0.0028)
Australia
0.0014 (0.0008)
WORLD
0.1556 (0.0771)
All effects combined
WORLD
0.3524 (0.1070)
28
Table 6: Welfare effects for selected countries following reduction of costs of imports to North
Korea from South Korea in 2001.
Country
Welfare effect, $ (Std.Err.)
Direct effect on importer
North Korea
0.1671 (0.1043)
Peaceful importer effect
South Korea
0.0428 (0.0237)
Japan
-0.0013 (0.0008)
Defense cuts by neighbors
United States of America 0.2711 (0.1324)
Canada
0.0047 (0.0031)
Mexico
0.0030 (0.0021)
Colombia
0.0015 (0.0008)
Venezuela
0.0011 (0.0007)
Brazil
0.0059 (0.0036)
Argentina
0.0015 (0.0010)
United Kingdom
0.0131 (0.0077)
Netherlands
0.0012 (0.0008)
France
0.0075 (0.0044)
Spain
0.0031 (0.0020)
Germany
0.0053 (0.0035)
Italy
0.0055 (0.0033)
Russia
0.0038 (0.0024)
Sweden
0.0012 (0.0008)
Norway
0.0011 (0.0007)
South Africa
0.0011 (0.0007)
Iran
0.0015 (0.0008)
Turkey
0.0012 (0.0007)
Israel
0.0013 (0.0007)
Saudi Arabia
0.0037 (0.0019)
United Arab Emirates
0.0025 (0.0012)
China
0.0167 (0.0099)
Taiwan
0.0013 (0.0010)
South Korea
0.0123 (0.0082)
Japan
0.1221 (0.0776)
India
0.0029 (0.0019)
Thailand
0.0012 (0.0007)
Malaysia
0.0011 (0.0007)
Singapore
0.0022 (0.0012)
Australia
0.0049 (0.0030)
WORLD
0.5280 (0.2792)
All effects combined
WORLD
0.7361 (0.2829)
29
Table 7: Welfare effects for selected countries following reduction of costs of imports to
Russia from the United States of America in 2001.
Country
Welfare effect, $ (Std.Err.)
Direct effect on importer
Russia
0.3123 (0.1436)
Peaceful importer effect
United States of America 0.2071 (0.1517)
Ukraine
-0.0019 (0.0010)
Defense cuts by neighbors
United States of America 0.2047 (0.1008)
Canada
0.0075 (0.0042)
Mexico
0.0049 (0.0030)
Colombia
0.0015 (0.0007)
Venezuela
0.0012 (0.0007)
Brazil
0.0062 (0.0031)
Argentina
0.0016 (0.0009)
United Kingdom
0.0173 (0.0083)
Netherlands
0.0011 (0.0006)
France
0.0089 (0.0045)
Spain
0.0041 (0.0023)
Germany
0.0056 (0.0031)
Italy
0.0054 (0.0027)
Russia
0.0041 (0.0019)
Finland
0.0015 (0.0008)
Sweden
0.0018 (0.0009)
Norway
0.0019 (0.0009)
South Africa
0.0010 (0.0005)
Iran
0.0018 (0.0008)
Israel
0.0012 (0.0005)
Saudi Arabia
0.0031 (0.0012)
United Arab Emirates
0.0020 (0.0008)
China
0.0110 (0.0051)
South Korea
0.0024 (0.0014)
Japan
0.0436 (0.0243)
India
0.0019 (0.0010)
Singapore
0.0014 (0.0006)
Australia
0.0030 (0.0016)
WORLD
0.3745 (0.1693)
All effects combined
WORLD
0.8893 (0.2397)
30
$0.0088 due to Japan. Furthermore, the American welfare gain of $0.2083 due to defense
cuts by North Korea is the product of $4.3300 of American welfare gain per dollar of North
Korean defense spending cut, times the $0.0481 of the magnitude of such cut (as shown in
Table 3). Furthermore, the marginal American welfare gain of $4.33 due to North Korean
defense cuts is the product of (i) the marginal effect of such defense cuts on the probability
of North Korean aggression against the Unites States, (ii) economic size (proxy for military
potential) of North Korea, and (iii) the overall sensitivity of the American welfare to military
conflicts.
6
Conclusion
The principal message of this paper is that increases in international trade, especially those
between belligerent nations, may lead to much larger positive welfare effects than estimated
by existing models of trade. In the three counterfactual experiments presented in this paper,
the magnitude of the additional welfare effects due to defense spending cuts worldwide is
comparable to that of direct welfare effects of increased trade. We also show that the welfare
effects of rising trade apply not only to the two trading partners, but also to other nations,
often on other continents, due to interdependence of global political relations and of national
defense spending.
To assess these effects, we develop a novel structural estimation technique that allows
to slice the total welfare effect of rising trade between two nations into several components.
First, rising trade makes the importer more dependent on the exporter and lowers the probability of conflict between the two, also makes both better off. Second, more peaceful relations
between the two launch a wave of defense spending cuts worldwide, which makes the world
even more peaceful. The model allows to show the welfare gains of every country due to
defense spending cuts by every other country.
The proposed model has a number of limitations which remain to be addressed in future
research. One key limitation is that our model ignores the problem of “trade zeros”: the
model assumes that a conflict reduces trade by a factor, therefore a positive trade volume in
case of peace remains positive in conflict; zero trade in conflict implies zero trade in peace as
well. Empirically, however, it is quite plausible that trade may be positive in case of peace
and zero in conflict, something that our methodology cannot replicate.
Another limitation is that we implement a static model and thus do not account for
intertemporal effects of conflicts and defense spending, possibly underestimating the true
31
effects. We also do not allow for military coalitions and, thereby, exclude a substitution
effect (if the U.S. reduce their defense spending as a result of increased trade with Brazil,
the U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea may increase rather than decrease their defense
spending to make up for the reduced protection from the U.S.) from the consideration. At
the same time, introducing military coalitions into the model may complicate the analysis
beyond the limits of tractability.
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http://psfaculty.ucdavis.edu/zmaoz/dyadmid.html .
A
dataset
(version
2.0).
Further details of the estimation procedure
We calculate the parameter estimates β̂ by maximizing (19) over β subject to (17). The
corresponding Lagrangian is
Λ(β̃, µ) = L(β̃) + G(β̃)T µ → max
where µ = {µi , ∀i} is the vector of Lagrange multipliers, and where superscript T denotes
the transposition operator, not to be confused with trade propensities. Assuming an interior
solution, the vector of parameter estimates β̂ and Lagrange multiplier estimates µ then
satisfies
∇β L(β̂) + ∇β G(β̂)T µ = 0,
(21)
G(β̂) = 0,
(22)
where ∇ denotes the Jacobian operator, i.e. ∇x f (x) is the K1 × K2 matrix of first partial
derivatives of a 1 × K2 vector-valued function f of K1 × 1 vector of variables x.
Our estimation setup seemingly deviates from that of the standard maximum likelihood
due to the fact that increased sample size (country-country-year observations) is likely to be
accompanied by an increased number of variables (specifically, country-year fixed effects σi ).
34
In fact, however, the number of degrees of freedom does not change: each additional variable
is complemented by an additional constraint (17) that uniquely determines the value of that
variable. For this reason, the asymptotic properties of our estimates are standard.
The asymptotic variance of the estimates is calculated using a standard technique (e.g.,
see Wikipedia article on Maximum Likelihood), with some augmentation to account for
constraints (17). First, we Taylor-expand the system (21)-(22) around the true value of β̂,
i.e. around β, and around the zero value of µ:
∇β (L(β)) + ∇ββ T (L(β)) (β̂ − β) + ∇β GT (β) µ + o({β̂ − β; µ}) = 0
G(β) + ∇β T G(β)(β̂ − β) + o(β̂ − β) = 0
(23)
(24)
where ∇ββ T is the Hessian (matrix of second derivatives) of its argument. The above system
may be solved for the unknowns as follows:
β̂ − β
µ
!
=
"
−∇ββ T (L(β)) −∇β T (G(β))
0
−∇β GT (β)
#−1
∇β (L(β))
G(β)
!
+ o({β̂ − β; µ}) (25)
The off-diagonal elements of the block matrix in square brackets in (25) are deterministic;
we denote the lower-left matrix by B(β) ≡ −∇β GT (β) , thus the upper-right matrix is
B T (β). The upper-left element of the block matrix in square brackets in (25), −∇ββ T (L(β)),
is random (since loglikelihood is a function of empirical conflict statuses, which are in turn
functions of income and trade shocks), and converges in probability to a square positivedefinite matrix nH(β), where H(β) ≡ −Eǫ,λ ∇ββ T (L(β)), and where n is the number of
country-country-year observations that enter the loglikelihood.
In the block vector in brackets on the right-hand side of (25), the lower element, G(β),
is deterministic and is equal to zero, while the upper element, ∇β (L(β)), is random and
has an expectation of zero. Thus, our estimates β̂ and µ have expectations of β and zero,
respectively. To find the asymptotic variance of β̂, we apply the Central Limit Theorem to
obtain
√
n(β̂ − β)
=
→d
1
nJ(β) √ ∇β (L(β)) + o({β̂ − β; µ})
n
N (0, Eǫ,λ nJ(β)Eǫ,λ (∇β (L(β)))2 Eǫ,λ nJ(β))
where J(β) is the upper-left block of the inverse block matrix shown in (25).
35
(26)
One can show that (dropping some function arguments)
Eǫ,λ J(β) =
−1
1 −1 1 −1 T
H − H B BH −1 B T
BH −1 ,
n
n
thus nEǫ,λ J(β) does not depend on n. We can also show that Eǫ,λ (∇β (L(β)))2 = H. Thus,
the asymptotic variance of β̂ is equal to (cf.(26))
−1
−1
1 −1
BH −1
BH −1 H H −1 − H −1 B T BH −1 B T
H − H −1 B T BH −1 B T
n
−1
1 −1 1 −1 T
BH −1
(27)
=
H − H B BH −1 B T
n
n
Eǫ,λ (β̂ − β)2 =
Stoica and Ng (1998) prove that (27) is equal to the Cramer-Rao variance lower bound,
hence the proposed estimator of unknown model parameters is asymptotically
efficient.
In the numerical procedure, we can approximate nH(β) by −∇ββ T L(β̂) , and B(β) by
B(β̂).
B
B.1
Data details
List of countries dropped from sample
A country was dropped from the sample if (i) it had no defense spending data in any year,
or (ii) it had data on imports from less than 5 trading partners in 2001; we also drop Nauru,
the second-smallest nation in the world, for which we could not construct the GDP data
for some years. The list of dropped countries is as follows: St. Kitts and Nevis, Monaco,
Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Comoros, Tonga, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Federated
States of Micronesia. Each of these had a GDP of under 3 billion dollars and no recorded
history of defense spending.
B.2
Country statistics
36
Table 8: Some country statistics, year 2001
Country
Defense spending,
% of GDP
Conflict
length
aggregated across
neighbors, countryyears
Total imports, % of
GDP
United States of America
Canada
Bahamas
Cuba
Haiti
Dominican Republic
Jamaica
Trinidad and Tobago
Barbados
Dominica
Grenada
St. Lucia
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Antigua and Barbuda
Mexico
Belize
Guatemala
Honduras
El Salvador
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Panama
Colombia
Venezuela
Guyana
Suriname
Ecuador
Peru
Brazil
Bolivia
Paraguay
Chile
Argentina
Uruguay
3.00
1.10
0.44
2.31
0
0.62
0.50
0.75
0.50
1.00
0
0
0
0.50
0.60
0.90
0.80
0.70
1.30
0.80
0
0
3.00
1.50
1.50
3.14
1.60
1.80
1.80
2.10
1.10
3.80
1.10
2.80
1.5081
0.1048
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.3656
0.3656
0.2043
0
0.3065
0
0
0.1022
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
11.7180
32.8808
49.1025
10.6750
18.0337
38.1901
36.1070
40.3019
40.8193
38.3043
34.0402
77.3815
39.6814
65.6241
29.2754
50.6530
29.2522
37.6782
35.1261
39.1568
26.5591
22.0094
12.6043
13.1988
82.3861
84.0103
26.7463
14.4915
10.9602
20.8488
34.1903
23.1375
7.3384
14.7288
Continued on next page
37
Country
Defense spending,
% of GDP
Conflict
length
aggregated across
neighbors, countryyears
Total imports, % of
GDP
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands
Belgium
Luxembourg
France
Switzerland
Spain
Portugal
Germany
Poland
Austria
Hungary
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Italy
Malta
Albania
Macedonia
Croatia
Yugoslavia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Slovenia
Greece
Cyprus
Bulgaria
Moldova
Romania
Russia
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Ukraine
Belarus
Armenia
Georgia
2.40
0.70
1.50
1.40
0.60
2.50
1.10
1.20
1.90
1.50
1.80
1.00
1.70
2.00
1.70
2.00
0.70
1.20
1.90
3.10
5.50
2.45
1.10
3.60
3.00
2.70
0.40
2.50
3.70
1.40
0.90
1.70
3.60
1.30
3.60
0.60
0.9220
0
0.0591
0
0
0.1667
0
0.0591
0.0591
0.0591
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.1022
0
0
0.1022
0
0
0.3871
0.5511
0
0
0
0.7823
0
0
0.0860
0
0.0860
0
0.2016
20.7991
43.1469
50.4285
77.5283
57.2586
24.8987
32.2164
23.3166
31.5640
25.5818
26.2372
39.2347
62.6157
63.6119
53.3359
21.1190
121.5685
32.2704
44.8176
38.1870
35.8826
49.8555
50.4138
21.6080
40.8713
51.2197
59.2851
37.6833
11.8982
83.9315
41.9360
51.8912
41.3333
67.6823
41.0939
23.4704
Continued on next page
38
Country
Defense spending,
% of GDP
Conflict
length
aggregated across
neighbors, countryyears
Total imports, % of
GDP
Azerbaijan
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Iceland
Cape Verde
Sao Tome and Principe
Guinea-Bissau
Equatorial Guinea
Gambia
Mali
Senegal
Benin
Mauritania
Niger
Cote DIvoire
Guinea
Burkina Faso
Liberia
Sierra Leone
Ghana
Togo
Cameroon
Nigeria
Gabon
Central African Republic
Chad
Congo
Democratic Republic of Congo
Uganda
Kenya
Tanzania
Burundi
Rwanda
Somalia
2.30
1.30
2.00
1.70
1.50
0
1.30
no data
4.40
0.23
1.00
2.20
1.30
0.60
3.50
1.20
0.75
1.50
1.20
4.41
3.70
0.70
2.33
1.30
0.80
1.80
1.55
1.90
2.86
8.35
2.50
1.30
1.50
6.00
3.50
2.56
0.4382
0
0
0.0134
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.7554
0
0.4785
0.4382
0
0
0.0134
0
0
0.0134
0
0
0.8441
2.2823
0
0
0
2.2823
0
25.0072
22.6418
27.5693
18.5413
27.3757
29.6218
42.9252
70.5393
46.9711
19.3426
94.9333
35.3301
35.2381
25.9257
49.8529
17.0250
23.0957
18.0433
16.9399
815.1370
50.4026
49.9575
26.5074
18.9304
16.5178
30.2574
10.5887
21.5112
21.2783
14.4494
17.3810
27.2178
17.4247
19.5625
11.7796
19.8681
Continued on next page
39
Country
Defense spending,
% of GDP
Conflict
length
aggregated across
neighbors, countryyears
Total imports, % of
GDP
Djibouti
Ethiopia
Eritrea
Angola
Mozambique
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Malawi
South Africa
Namibia
Lesotho
Botswana
Swaziland
Madagascar
Mauritius
Seychelles
Morocco
Algeria
Tunisia
Libya
Sudan
Iran
Turkey
Iraq
Egypt
Syria
Lebanon
Jordan
Israel
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Kuwait
Bahrain
Qatar
United Arab Emirates
Oman
5.10
7.50
32.70
6.40
1.30
0.74
4.70
0.70
1.50
2.70
4.00
3.30
1.50
1.20
0.20
1.70
2.30
3.40
1.80
3.10
4.50
3.70
3.70
7.24
3.20
5.50
5.40
6.30
8.00
10.60
4.40
7.20
4.00
7.08
9.40
10.80
0
0
0
1.8253
0
0.9812
0.8441
0
0
0.8441
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.4409
1.0699
2.5054
0
0.5000
0.9973
0
1.4973
0.6452
0
0.2473
0
0
0
0
121.4357
19.4002
27.2792
38.5701
21.9129
29.9271
22.2083
25.1134
22.9668
14.9584
14.1348
4.8122
6.3726
14.7020
44.2940
79.3677
29.2162
17.8380
42.6296
15.7767
14.3243
14.6389
20.1403
29.5683
11.9293
25.2845
34.8417
51.6011
25.0551
20.3195
23.9812
22.0456
46.4132
20.4877
30.5749
28.9443
Continued on next page
40
Country
Defense spending,
% of GDP
Conflict
length
aggregated across
neighbors, countryyears
Total imports, % of
GDP
Afghanistan
Turkmenistan
Tajikistan
Kyrgyzstan
Uzbekistan
Kazakhstan
China
Mongolia
Taiwan
North Korea
South Korea
Japan
India
Bhutan
Pakistan
Bangladesh
Myanmar
Sri Lanka
Maldives
Nepal
Thailand
Cambodia
Laos
Vietnam
Malaysia
Singapore
Brunei
Philippines
Indonesia
Australia
Papua New Guinea
New Zealand
Vanuatu
Solomon Islands
Kiribati
Tuvalu
9.95
6.28
1.20
2.90
1.20
0.80
1.90
2.10
2.40
9.85
2.60
1.00
3.10
4.16
3.70
1.30
2.30
5.00
4.56
0.80
1.50
2.20
0.80
7.19
1.60
4.60
5.70
1.60
0.53
1.80
0.90
1.20
0
0
0
0
1.5995
0
0.0081
0
0.0672
0
1.0753
0
0.4274
0.4839
0.4839
0.1586
0.4677
0
0.4704
0.0027
0.2177
0
0
0
0.2177
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.0806
0
0.1048
0
0
0
0
0
0
22.6432
62.9105
63.5987
30.9817
20.8336
29.2810
23.3518
49.2217
34.1775
15.6948
27.3303
8.4593
9.5603
5.7107
14.1162
16.5070
40.6860
33.7569
49.8122
14.6684
49.8994
34.6157
39.3159
47.8934
77.3222
126.1993
23.4061
43.5333
19.4895
17.4795
35.6907
24.9090
63.8031
24.2162
69.0734
87.8851
Continued on next page
41
Country
Defense spending,
% of GDP
Conflict
length
aggregated across
neighbors, countryyears
Total imports, % of
GDP
Fiji
Palau
Samoa
1.90
0
0
0
0
0
43.7271
21.0989
109.0048
42