• trade
• conflicts

For ages economists, philosophers, historians, political scientists and many other thinkers and scholars have argued about the connections between world economy and international relations. Within this broad subject, two related and prolific debates exist: the possible peacekeeping or warmongering effects of trade and, inversely, the influences of warfare and peace on commerce. The present dissertation introduces a theoretical and empirical assessment about the interdependence between international trade and interstate conflict. In particular, a causal perspective on the issue is adopted. The first part presents the most renown theories about trade and conflict, trying to extrapolate the alleged casual linkages behind them. In the second part, a detailed review of the previous empirical studies is provided. Furthermore, an empirical analysis on the interdependence between international trade and militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) is attempted employing a vector autoregression (VAR) model. Finally, personal considerations about the examined arguments conclude the thesis.