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IZA Discussion Paper No. 10859
June 2017
An Injury to One Is an Injury to All: Terrorism's Spillover Effects on Bilateral Trade

In this paper we investigate whether the effects of terrorism in one country spillover to affect trade in neighboring nations. Using a sample of more than 160 countries from 1976 to 2014, we report robust evidence that terrorist attacks in a nation's contiguous neighbors significantly reduce bilateral trade. Each additional terrorist attack in a neighboring country reduces bilateral trade by nearly 0.013% on average, which translates into a reduction of about $6.4 million USD in total trade. Trade effects from terrorist incidents are higher in sub-Sahara. Adverse trade effects hold for different flow and stock measures of terrorism, and even for terrorist incidents with zero casualties. Spillovers from terrorism are relatively long-lived, depressing bilateral trade up to five years after a terrorist event. Our findings are consistent with terrorism adversely impacting bilateral trade through several channels: psychological distress, higher trade costs arising from increased trade insecurity and regulatory burden, and adverse effects on income and trade reform.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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