The Economic Basis Of Peace

William Mott examines the relationships between economic growth and international conflict in history and theory, developing and analyzing a set of observed empirical modern growth-conflict relationships over long periods, and presenting an explanation of the observations. After introducing the growth-conflict relationship as the unit of analysis, he identifies historical perceptions of the growth-conflict relationship from ancient times through the modern era.

Mott offers an alternative theoretical construct for further investigation, and speculates about the impact of these results on orthodox political-economic theory. The results of this work carry powerful implications for national management of foreign direct investment and trade in both home countries and host nations.

Review: ?The author provides extensive and informative reviews of the extant historical and theoretical approaches to analyzing economic growth and conflict. He then offers a new (empirical) approach to find the relation between growth and trade for each of the 30 countries in his sample. Readers interested in careful statistical analysis of large samples will enjoy this....The overall analysis is very useful.

It convincingly makes the case that economic growth and conflict are related in a reasonably complex way. Mott's book is a very fine example of careful empirical work. It will be useful to those working in everything from economic history to policy formation. It should be particularly useful to those interested in economic development.?-Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology