In this paper, we explore the relationship between international trade openness and two major political distortions, uncertainty, polarization. We consider measures of openness, expenditures number partners, as well their volatility. As distortions characteristics country are endogenously related, instrument uncertainty by standard deviation effective leaders’ ages a minimum age leaders country...

This paper explores the causal relationship between economic growth, trade openness and energy consumption using data of 15 Asian countries. The study covers the period of 1980–2011. We have applied panel cointegration and causality approaches to examine the long-run and causal relationship between variables. Empirical results confirm the presence of cointegration between variables. The impact ...

This paper aims to investigate the direction of causality between economic growth, energy consumption and trade openness in case of Iran for the period 1967–2012. We apply the newly developed combined cointegration test proposed by Bayer and Hanck (2013). Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) is applied to determine the direction of causality between these three variables. The result of Bayer-Ha...

This study analyzes the impact of international trade on environmental efficiency. Using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model that allows us to treat undesirable outputs and super-efficiency beyond unity, we measure the environmental efficiency of four typical air pollutants—SO2, NOx, particulate matter 10 μm or less in diameter, and CO2—for 98 countries for the period 1970–2008. The resulti...

Trade and Unemployment: What Do the Data Say? This paper documents a robust empirical regularity: in the long-run, higher trade openness is causally associated to a lower structural rate of unemployment. We establish this fact using: (i) panel data from 20 OECD countries, (ii) cross-sectional data on a larger set of countries. The time structure of the panel data allows us to deal with endogene...

This study is an empirical attempt to find out whether under sanctions Iran’s trade direction has shifted away from Europe (trade policy of de-Europeanization) towards Asia (trade policy of Asianization). The analysis is conducted using a panel-gravity trade model to analyze bilateral trade pattern between Iran and 50 countries from the EU and Asia during the period 2006–2013. To this end, the ...

The study investigates how openness influences information and communication technology (ICT) penetration for improved government quality in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000-2012. Openness is measured in terms of trade and financial globalisation whereas ICT is proxied with mobile phone and internet penetration rates. Ten bundled and unbundled governance indicators are used. The empirical...