Trade under Tensions: Insights from Media-Reported Bilateral events

Nathan Chevalier, Matthieu Crozet, Charlotte Emlinger and Daniel Mirza

Working Papers from CEPII research center

Abstract: A growing number of studies show the significant impact of major geopolitical events and alignments between countries on international trade. We propose a new dataset, based on the GDELT database, that captures the exposure of country pairs to all types of geopolitical frictions, including low- and medium-importance events. The statistical indicators, which are monthly and bilateral, provide information on the geopolitical climate surrounding the relations between each country pair over time. The database covers 201 countries over nearly 10 years. Our econometric analysis confirms that geopolitical tensions create an unfavorable climate for international trade. We estimate that An increase of one standard deviation in our tension indicator has an effect on trade equivalent to a tariff ranging from 0.06% to 8.19%, depending on the specification. We also observe that the sensitivity of international trade to geopolitical events has increased significantly since the COVID-19 crisis.

Keywords: Geoeconomics; International Trade; Risk; GDELT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 F51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
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