Creative Destruction in the International State System

2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K01605
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Weese Eric 東京大学, 社会科学研究所, 准教授 (50777844)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: Political boundaries / Creative destruction / War

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

This project is joint research with David Schonholzer at IIES, Stockholm University. David came to visit Tokyo shortly before Christmas this year and we completed work on the first paper that is a part of this project. We submitted it to the American Economic Review, where it is still under review. This paper is available as
"Creative Destruction in the European State System: 1000-1850." University of Tokyo CREPE Discussion Paper #64.
We then began work on a second paper, with the objective of adding data on international wars to our map data, and examining the coalitions that form in these conflicts over the past 1000 years. We have hired an RA at Stockholm University to help us link this dataset and intend to begin analyzing this data in summer 2020.
There is the potential for a third paper with Nancy Qian at Northwestern University. This would be a long delayed project examining the types of political boundaries that arose in Europe at different points in time. This project would require the use of structural modeling techniques. These have in most cases already been developed as part of a distinct project on Meiji-era Japanese municipal mergers. This paper might thus be comparatively easy to write notwithstanding the fact that it would feature structural estimation techniques.

Current Status of Research Progress

2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.

Reason

One paper is already under review and research on the second paper is underway.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

We hope to complete our second paper by the end of this calendar year.