How Much Does Violence Tax Trade?
CESifo, Munich, 2004
CESifo Working Paper No. 1222
![](https://cesifo.org/DocImg/cesifo1_wp1222.jpg?c=1689237094)
We investigate the empirical impact of violence as compared to other trade impediments on trade flows. Our analysis is based on a panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 1999, which brings together information from the Rose [2004] dataset, the ITERATE dataset for terrorist events, and datasets of external and internal conflict. We explore these data with traditional and theoretical gravity models. We calculate that, for a given country year, the presence of terrorism, as well as internal and external conflict is equivalent to as much as a 30 percent tariff on trade. This is larger than estimated tariff-equivalent costs of border and language barriers and tariff-equivalent reduction through GSPs and WTO participation.