Determinants of International Peace: An Empirical Analysi

This thesis examines the direct implications of political, economic, and socio-economic determinants of peace on the global peace level using a panel dataset covering 162 countries over the time period 2007-2016. The empirical analysis is carried out through different empirical specifications and econometric strategies. The benchmark empirical results suggest that countries with higher economic development levels, education, trade openness, and those that enjoy a democratic political system are expected to be more peaceful. On the other hand, countries endowed with natural resources are expected to be less peaceful, which supports the resource curse hypothesis. Supplementary empirical results show that the effects of some peace determinants (GDP per capita, trade openness, and democratic freedom) did not significantly change across the whole-time period 2007-2016, unlike other peace determinants such as primary education and natural resources which exhibited different significance levels over different time intervals. Other supplementary empirical results indicate that the effects of peace determinants on GPI's (Global Peace Index) sub-components are mostly consistent with their effects on GPI itself. Results from alternative empirical specifications indicate that the presence of a democratic political system would increase the positive effects of economic development on peace levels, reduce the negative effects of natural resource endowment on nations' peace levels, and that a larger natural resource endowment has a higher effect on increasing peace levels in rich nations compared to poor nations. Finally, the empirical analysis shows that regional alliances do indeed improve nations' peace levels and that their effects on peace vary greatly across different geo-economic regions.