International Economics and Geoeconomics

The research group "International Economics and Geoeconomics" studies how wars, geopolitical threats, and political shocks shape the global economy and international financial markets. In an era of renewed great-power rivalry, rearmament, and open conflict, geopolitical risk has become a first-order driver of output, prices, trade, and asset values.

Much of the group's work centers on the economics of war and conflict. Drawing on long-run historical data, we quantify the costs of war for the countries where fighting takes place, for their neighbors, and trace how these costs travel across borders. Using financial data, we study how stock markets, sovereign bond markets, and capital flows respond to invasions, military threats, and escalation, and what asset prices reveal about expectations of conflict.

Underlying this research are questions about who pays for war and who profits from it, how the risk of conflict is priced and transmitted internationally, and how economic and financial strength is related to military outcomes.