Suchergebnisse

The dissertation examines the relationship between conflict and trade on several levels: First, data problems and resulting sample selection bias are being discussed. Second, the impact of different forms of conflict on bilateral trade flows is being analyzed employing a gravity equation. Third, the co-founding factors of the trade-conflict relationship, namely democracy and development, are being included in a country-by-country vector auto-regressive analysis.

The empirical analysis of datasets covering a large number of countries and time periods has become an integral part of conflict and peace economics. As such, numerous studies examine relationships between and among macroeconomic, political, and conflict variables and this often involves the merging of disparate datasets to combine relevant variables for which the country unit of analysis, however, is not necessarily the same. This article highlights difficulties in the data merging process and, by way of example, presents detailed country coding unit comparison for two economic (UN Comtrade and World Development Indicators), two democracy (Polity IV and V-Dem), and two conflict datasets (UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset and COW Militarized Interstate Disputes Dataset). We find that merging datasets can result in the elimination of very large numbers of observations due to unmergeable records and that dropped observations often include the very countries or territorial entities most of interest in conflict and peace economics.

Abstract
There is currently a geopoliticisation of foreign policy, which is primarily driven by dependencies on autocratic systems. Autocracies are constantly on the rise, especially when measured by the percentage distribution of the world population. Even though the EU still trades with significantly more democracies than autocracies, trade relations with autocracies are often characterised by strong dependencies, especially with regard to critical raw materials such as lithium or magnesium. This also applies to the market for medical products, where China in particular uses its position as the main supplier to expand its geopolitical influence. This, together with the fact that autocracies are generally more likely to impose trade restrictions than democracies, means that the EU needs a strategy for how to handle trade with autocratic regimes in the future.

Iran is one of the countries most affected by COVID-19 worldwide and is considered the epicenter of the outbreak in the Middle East. The growing number of cases in combination with the already ailing economy is putting increasing pressure on the Iranian healthcare system. The delayed reaction of the Iranian government to the outbreak of the pandemic and the low level of political confidence of the population in politics aggravate the crisis situation. In their contribution, the authors show that the far-reaching sanctions Iran has been subject to since the US withdrew from the nuclear agreement make it difficult for the health care system to react quickly to COVID-19. The authors recommend that the European Union, in its role as a responsible "global player", ensure the transfer of medical equipment for humanitarian purposes to Iran and strengthen cooperation efforts in the wake of the pandemic at the level of multilateral institutions. The EU should also play an active role in maintaining the dialogue between the USA and Iran. ; Der Iran gehört weltweit zu den am stärksten von COVID-19 betroffenen Ländern und gilt als Epizentrum für den Ausbruch im Nahen Osten. Die wachsende Fallzahl im Zusammenspiel mit der bereits angeschlagenen Wirtschaft setzt das iranische Gesundheitssystem zunehmend unter Druck. Die verzögerte Reaktion der iranischen Regierung auf den Ausbruch der Pandemie und das geringe Politikvertrauen der Bevölkerung in die Politik verschärfen die Krisensituation. Die Autorinnen zeigen in ihrem Beitrag, dass die weitreichenden Sanktionen, denen der Iran seit dem Ausstieg der USA aus dem Nuklear-Abkommen ausgesetzt ist, eine zügige Reaktion des Gesundheitssystems auf COVID-19 erschweren. Die Autorinnen empfehlen der Europäischen Union in ihrer Rolle als verantwortungsvoller "Global Player", den Transfer von medizinischer Ausrüstung zu humanitären Zwecken in den Iran sicherstellen und die Kooperationsbemühungen im Zuge der Pandemie auf der Ebene multilateraler Institutionen zu stärken. Zudem sollte die EU bei der Aufrechterhaltung des Dialogs zwischen den USA und dem Iran aktiv mitwirken.

[Einleitung] Die Große Koalition darf sich zu Beginn ihrer Legislaturperiode über viele gute Nachrichten freuen. Die deutsche Wirtschaft gewinnt zunehmend an Fahrt, die Erwerbstätigkeit steigt auf ein Rekordhoch und die Steuereinnahmen sprudeln. Die öffentlichen Haushalte dürften in den kommenden Jahren teils deutliche Überschüsse erwirtschaften (Boysen-Hogrefe et al., 2013). Die günstige Lage auf dem Arbeitsmarkt entlastet auch die sozialen Sicherungssysteme. Insbesondere die Rentenkasse ist gut gefüllt: Die finanzielle Reserve der Rentenversicherung (die sogenannte Nachhaltigkeitsrücklage) lag Ende 2013 bei über 30 Milliarden Euro. Dies entspricht 1,8 Monatsausgaben der Rentenversicherung. Alles gut dürfte man meinen. Leider ist schon heute absehbar, dass die Rücklagen der Rentenversicherung in Zukunft langsam aber stetig dahinschmelzen. Und das auch ohne die zusätzlichen Kosten, die auf die Beitragszahler aufgrund des von der Bundesregierung beschlossenen Rentenpakets zukommen. Schuld daran ist der demografische Wandel. Immer weniger Erwerbstätige müssen in Zukunft für immer mehr Rentner aufkommen. Diese Entwicklung gefährdet die Finanzierbarkeit des gesetzlichen Rentensystems und droht, das Wirtschaftswachstum in Deutschland langfristig zu verlangsamen. Dieser Kiel Policy Brief informiert über die wirtschaftlichen Herausforderungen des demografischen Wandels und zeigt Lösungsstrategien auf. Unser Fazit: Gelingt es uns, das Erwerbspotenzial von Älteren und von Frauen zu mobilisieren und Deutschland attraktiv für qualifizierte Zuwanderer zu machen, ist Deutschland für die Zukunft gut gerüstet. Dazu muss die Politik aber bereits heute die entsprechenden Weichen stellen - und nicht angesichts der derzeit guten Wirtschaftslage die Augen vor den zukünftigen Herausforderungen verschließen.

Abstract
This paper examines the impact of coalitions on the economic costs of the 2012 Iran and 2014 Russia sanctions. By estimating and simulating a quantitative general equilibrium trade model under different coalition setups, we (1) dissect welfare losses for sanctions senders and target; (2) compare prospective coalition partners; (3) investigate 'optimal' coalitions that maximize payoff from sanctions; (4) provide bounds for sanctions potential, that is, the maximum welfare change attainable when sanctions are scaled vertically up to an embargo, and horizontally up to a global regime. Relative to unilateral action, we find that coalitions magnify welfare losses imposed while their impact on domestic welfare loss incurred depends on the design and sectoral dimension of sanctions. Hypothetical cooperation of large developing economies such as China additionally raises the deterrent force of coalitions. Additionally, we quantify transfers that equalize welfare losses across coalition members to further demonstrate asymmetries in the relative economic burden of sanctions. In all scenarios, we implement a novel Bayesian bootstrap procedure that generates confidence bands for simulation outcomes.

Populist parties and actors now govern various countries around the world. Often elected by the public in times of crises and over the perceived failure of 'the elites', the question stands as to how populist governments actually perform once elected, especially in times of crisis. Using the pandemic shock in the form of the COVID-19 crises, our paper poses the question of how populist governments handle the pandemic. We answer this question by introducing a theoretical framework according to which populist governments (1) enact less far-reaching policy measures to counter the pandemic and (2) lower the effort of citizens to counter the pandemic, so that populist governed countries are (3) hit worse by the pandemic. We test these propositions in a sample of 42 countries with weekly data from 2020. Employing econometric models, we find empirical support for our propositions and ultimately conclude that excess mortality in populist governed countries exceeds the excess mortality of non-populist countries by 8 percentage points (i.e., 98%). Our findings have important implications for the assessment of populist government performance in general, as well as counter-pandemic measures in particular, by providing evidence that opportunistic and inadequate policy responses, spreading misinformation and downplaying the pandemic are strongly related to increases in COVID-19 mortality.

Populist parties and actors now govern various countries around the world. Often elected by the public in times of crises and over the perceived failure of 'the elites', the question stands as to how populist governments actually perform once elected, especially in times of crisis. Using the pandemic shock in the form of the COVID-19 crises, our paper answers the question of how populist governments handle the pandemic. We answer this question by introducing a theoretical framework according to which populist governments (1) enact less far-reaching policy measures to counter the pandemic and (2) lower the effort of citizens to counter the pandemic, so that populist governed countries are (3) hit worse by the pandemic. We test these propositions in a sample of 42 countries with weekly data from 2020. Employing econometric models, we find empirical support for our propositions and ultimately conclude that excess mortality in populist governed countries exceeds the excess mortality of conventional countries by 10 percentage points (i.e., 100%). Our findings have important implications for the assessment of populist government performance in general, as well as counter-pandemic measures in particular, by providing evidence that opportunistic and inadequate policy responses, spreading misinformation and downplaying the pandemic are strongly related to increases in COVID-19 mortality.

Military interventions and economic sanctions are increasingly seen as strategic substitutes for achieving national and global security objectives, both impose economic costs. We quantify the lower bound of the costs of sanctions using a gravity model of international trade and a general equilibrium simulation model. We find that sanctions amount to a loss in GDP of about 34 billion USD in 2019/2020 for the sanctioning NATO countries collectively, but the costs of sanctions are very unevenly distributed. No other country contributes as much as Germany (8.1 billion USD), while the costs for the US amount to 2.6 billion USD. Accounting for sanctions, countries' contributions to global security as a share of GDP are closer to the 2% NATO target than a narrow focus on military expenditure alone would suggest. Hence, there is less free-riding than some observers suspect. ; Militärische Interventionen werden zunehmend durch Sanktionen ersetzt, um außenpolitische Ziele der globalen Sicherheit zu verfolgen. Beide Mittel verursachen ökonomische Kosten. Anhand des Gravitationsmodells des internationalen Handels und eines allgemeinen Gleichgewichtsmodells quantifizieren wir die Untergrenze von Sanktionskosten. Die Sanktionen implizieren für die sanktionierenden NATO-Staaten im Jahr 2019/2020 einen BIP-Verlust von rund 34 Mrd. USD. Diese Sanktionskosten sind jedoch sehr ungleich verteilt. Kein anderes Land trägt so viel zu den Sanktionskosten bei wie Deutschland (8,1 Milliarden USD), während die Kosten für die USA weniger als 2,6 Milliarden USD betragen. Bezieht man die Sanktionskosten mit ein, liegen die Beiträge der Länder zur globalen Sicherheit als Anteil am BIP näher am NATO-Ziel von 2%, als ein enger Fokus auf die Militärausgaben allein vermuten lässt. In Bezug auf Beiträge zur globalen Sicherheit gibt es daher weniger Trittbrettfahren als manche Beobachter vermuten.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased pressure on the relationship between governments and the public, making cooperation between both actors more critical than ever. Surprisingly, there is significant variation in public compliance with health policies, especially regarding vaccine uptake across different countries. Based on this finding, we seek to understand why vaccination hesitancy varies between countries. Instead of focusing solely on government trust and satisfaction, this research examines the impact of individuals' experiences having lived in autocratic countries on vaccine hesitancy. We derive a formal model of how autocratic experience and the subsequent distrust in health policies affect the individual calculus on vaccine uptake, and test the propositions of our model in a sample of 33 European countries on the micro-level. We find that autocratic experience gravely impacts individual vaccine hesitancy. Our findings shed light on the prolonged impact of autocratic rule on societal processes and on the roots of vaccine hesitancy, which is not rooted in general distrust but rather a highly specific form of scepticism towards government action.