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In their chapter, ‘A method to compute a peace gross world product by country and by economic sector’, Jurgen Brauer and John Tepper Marlin present a novel method to assess the economic value of peace, in both the domestic and international realms. This is not only a tool for assessing and forecasting the potential benefits of reduced violence, but it is an example of best social science practice in that by design it incorporates the best existing knowledge on the effects of peace. This approach combining meta-analysis with a novel integrating framework is quite promising. For the purposes of the book, it sets the stage nicely for the subsequent chapters by highlighting the big picture of expected welfare gains from peace, within a rigorous scientific context, rather than one of advocacy. Estimating the potential economic benefits of internal and international peace is also fundamental in understanding the potential economic incentives which might drive political and business leaders to avoid deadly conflict, and pursue peace.

Purpose – The chapter reports on an attempt to compute the size of gross world product (GWP) under the assumption that all violence ceases.

Methodology/approach – Spreadsheet-based simulations, given seed values taken from extensive literature review; this is done, for 2007, in nominal foreign exchange–based US dollars (USD) as well as in purchasing power parity (ppp)–based dollars (international dollars).

Beneficial economic effects from more internal peace (nonviolence within countries) as well from external peace (nonviolence between and among countries) are calculated for each of 140 countries. In addition, we compute sectoral economic effects for the United States.

Findings – For 2007, the simulations suggest that in a state of nonviolence the world economy could have been larger by 4.8 trillion dollars, or 8.7 per cent of actual GWP, when measured in nominal, foreign exchange–based USD, or by 6.0 trillion international dollars, or 9.2 per cent of GWP, when measured in purchasing power parity values.

Limitations – The simulations are based on disparate values found in the literature to seed the spreadsheet calculations; various assumptions are made that would need to be confirmed through country- and sector-specific studies.

Practical implications – Knowledge of the potential size of forgone economic benefits due to violence can assist to set out global violence reduction goals in order to achieve measurable economic results.

Originality/value of chapter – To our knowledge this is the first attempt to calculate the size of the worldwide economic benefits forgone due to violence.

This article discusses the work of the Global Peace Index and how peace itself can be characterized in order to analyze its relationship with society. This article explores the various notions and definitions of peace which exist, such as the differences between “Positive Peace” and “Negative Peace.” Peace cannot simply be thought of as “the absence of violence,” there are many complex aspects to take into consideration and which influence the creation of peaceful societies, including political stability, economics, types of government, and business environments, to name but a few.

Aditya Agrawal is a scholarship graduate from Bond University (2006, first class honors in Management Science) and the 2007–2008 summer scholar at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. He commenced work at the University College, Australian Defence Force Academy in June 2008 and is currently reading for his doctorate in military outsourcing. Previously he has worked with both the corporate sector and the government departments. He has published in scholarly journals and peer-reviewed conferences and was awarded the Best Paper Prize at the national Australian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2007).