Citation

Anderton CH, Carter JR. J. Peace Res. 2001; 38(4): 445-457.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0022343301038004003

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The 'trade promotes peace' hypothesis rests upon three premises: (1) Societies achieve salient economic gains from their trading relationships; (2) serious conflict among societies disrupts trade; and (3) premises 1 and 2 enter the calculus of political decisionmakers. If any one of the three premises does not hold, the liberal linkage between trade and peace is broken. In a recent analysis of seven non-major power dyads, Katherine Barbieri and Jack Levy raise doubts about the second premise upon which the liberal hypothesis rests. In this article, we further test the trade disruption premise. We use an interrupted time-series model to study the impact of war on trade for 14 major power dyads. We find reasonably strong evidence that major power war is associated with a decline in trade relative to pre- and postwar periods. We also investigate the impact of war on trade for 13 non-major power dyads. Here the evidence is weaker but on balance remains supportive of the trade disruption premise.