Constantinos Syropoulos

On Trade and the Stability of (Armed) Peace

In a recent paper, Constantinos Syropoulos and his coauthor Michelle R. Garfinkel addressed the question of how trade openness affects the prospects of peace. In the context of a dynamic model in which two sovereign states have overlapping ownership claims on an insecure resource/asset, their dispute can be resolved violently through war or peacefully through settlement but under the threat of war. Both approaches to conflict resolution depend on the states’ military capacities. However, they differ in several respects. War undermines international trade and may be destructive; but, once a winner is declared, arming is unnecessary in future periods. By contrast, peaceful settlement avoids destruction and sustains trade; yet, settlements must be renegotiated and the states must continue to arm for leverage in future negotiations. The researchers study the conditions under which war and peace arise as perfectly coalition-proof equilibria over time. In addition to examining the prospects of “armed” peace, they also explore the effects of trade on arming incentives and welfare. The find that, depending on time preferences, more liberal (open) trade regimes can have a pacifying effect on international relations. Furthermore, uneven ownership could be more conducive to the stability of peace.

During his visit at CESifo, Constantinos Syropoulos will interact with Yalcin Erdal, Gabriel Felbermayr and his colleague Yoto V. Yotov to study theoretically and empirically various aspects of economic sanctions.

Mr Syropoulos is an international trade economist with strong research interests in the inter-dependence between international trade and geopolitics, preferential and multilateral trade agreements, political economy, the economics of conflict and appropriation and international cartels. In recent work, he has explored the possible links between trade openness and international conflict.

Constantinos Syropoulos is currently Trustee Professor of International Economics at the School of Economics at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He received his MA, M.Phil and PhD in Economics from Yale University and was previously on the faculty at Florida International and Pennsylvania State Universities. He has published extensively in his areas of expertise and has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of International Economics.