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By examining the link between the two types of FDI and intrastate conflict from 1990 to 2015 in 138 countries, this paper intends to test the peace-through-FDI thesis.

To empirically test the hypotheses, this study examines county-year observations from 1990 to 2015 for 138 countries. An instrumental variable method is utilized to this end.

This paper shows that, while greenfield FDI generates pacifying effects on intrastate conflict, M&A investment is likely to promote the onset of intrastate conflict.

Despite the extensive literature on FDI and the onset of intrastate conflict, many have approached FDI as a singular phenomenon, and have not broken it down into its constituent parts of greenfield and brownfield investment types. Theorizing that this practice had oversimplified and blurred the relationship of FDI on intrastate conflict onset, the authors pursued the collection of novel data in order to more completely distinguish between the two types of FDI. With this novel approach dividing FDI into its component parts, the authors break open the black box of FDI to empirically find out the extent of its diverse influence on the onset of intrastate conflict.

Disasters and armed conflict often co-occur, but does that imply that disasters trigger or fuel conflict? In the small but growing body of literature attempting to answer this question, divergent findings indicate the complex and contextual nature of a potential answer to this question. The purpose of this study is to contribute a robust cross-country analysis of the co-occurrence of disaster and conflict, with a particular focus on the potential role played by disaster.

Grounded in a theoretical model of disaster–conflict co-occurrence, this study merges data from 163 countries between 1990 and 2017 on armed conflict, disasters and relevant control variables (low human development, weak democratic institutions, natural resource dependence and large population size/density).

The main results of this study show that, despite a sharp increase in the co-occurrence of disasters and armed conflict over time, disasters do not appear to have a direct statistically significant relation with the occurrence of armed conflict. This result contributes to the understanding of disasters and conflicts as indirectly related via co-creation mechanisms and other factors.

This study is a novel contribution, as it provides a fresh analysis with updated data and includes different control variables that allow for a significant contribution to the field.

This paper aims to address the following questions: is good liner shipping connectivity a requisite for merchandise imports plus exports? What is the average of merchandise imports plus exports of the countries neighboring China? Do the merchandise imports plus exports of these countries correspond to each country’s own merchandise imports plus exports or liner shipping connectivity index (LSCI)?

The authors spatially analyze liner shipping connectivity and merchandise imports plus exports using 2016 data and a common framework for linear regression to establish the relationship amongst a country’s LSCI and its merchandise imports plus exports and between its merchandise imports plus exports and those of its neighbors. Merchandise imports plus exports of countries are not necessarily independent of each other, and countries that are contiguous may produce similar observations.

North America and Western Europe comprised clusters of countries that participated more actively in the international trading system, while Africa’s countries had less international trade than average. The study identifies and quantifies the geographical ripple of transport infrastructure on merchandise trade from a national perspective. Notably, a spatially lagged term improved the model’s ability to account for variations in merchandise imports plus exports across countries.

The spatial lag of merchandise imports plus exports can contribute to specifying the spread of merchandise imports plus exports beyond what the authors would anticipate from a country’s network of liner shipping.