For proponents of the view that anthropogenic climate change will become a 'threat multiplier' for instability in the decades ahead, the Syrian civil war has become a recurring reference point, providing apparently compelling evidence that such conflict effects are already with us. According to this view, human-induced climatic change was a contributory factor in the extreme drought experienced within Syria prior to its civil war; this drought in turn led to large-scale migration; and this migration in turn exacerbated the socio-economic stresses that underpinned Syria's descent into war. This article provides a systematic interrogation of these claims, and finds little merit to them. Amongst other things it shows that there is no clear and reliable evidence that anthropogenic climate change was a factor in Syria's pre civil war drought; that this drought did not cause anywhere near the scale of migration that is often alleged; and that there exists no solid evidence that drought migration pressures in Syria contributed to civil war onset. The Syria case, the article finds, does not support 'threat multiplier' views of the impacts of climate change; to the contrary, we conclude, policymakers, commentators and scholars alike should exercise far greater caution when drawing such linkages or when securitising climate change. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.orgflicensesiby/4.0/)

This paper explores two questions. First, can Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) affect industrial development in developing countries? Second, does it matter for developing countries whom they sign the PTAs with? We find that the answer to both questions is yes. Using bilateral manufactured goods exports data from 28 developing countries during 1978-2005, we find that South-South PTAs have a significantly positive effect on manufactured goods exports. In contrast, no such effect is detected in the case of South-North PTAs. We confirmed the robustness of these findings to estimation methodology, sample selection, time period, zero trade flows, and multilateral trade resistance. JEL Classification Codes: F13; F14; F15; O14; O24; L60

Using bilateral trade data in total and technology-and-skill-intensive manufactured goods for 28 developing countries that account for 82% of all developing country manufactures exports between 1978 and 2005, this paper explores the effects of financial development on the pattern of specialization in South-South and South-North trade. The empirical results using dynamic panel regressions and comprehensive sensitivity tests suggest that financial development in the South has an economically and statistically significant positive effect on the share of total and technology-andskill-intensive manufactures exports in GDP, and total exports in South-South trade. In contrast, no such significant or robust effect of financial development is found in South-North trade. Overall, the positive effect of financial development is found to be asymmetric favoring South-South significantly more than South-North trade. In addition, financial development is found to be increasing technologyand-skill-intensive manufactured goods exports significantly more than total manufactured or merchandise goods exports. JEL Classification Codes: F14; F15; G10; O16; O54

We investigate the effects of real exchange rate uncertainty and financial depth on manufactures exports from 28 emerging economies to the North and South over 1978-2005. We estimate a dynamic panel model using system GMM approach and show that for the majority of countries in our sample exchange rate uncertainty affects both South-South and South-North trade negatively. Furthermore, for several cases we discover that this effect is unidirectional, that is South-South or South-North. In addition, we find that while financial depth plays a tradeenhancing role, exchange rate shocks can negate this effect. We also show that trade among developing economies is likely to enhance export growth.

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With the popular revolt in Syria entering its ninth month, it is becoming more evident that the current regime is reaching its historical limits. To understand the origin of these revolts, however, one needs to explore the longer-term history. This report situates Syria’s uprisings within the wider Arab trajectory and argues that the state socialist model built by the Syrian Ba’ath in the 1960s has given way to an organic relationship between Westernized merchant classes and authoritarian forces. However, the increasing fusion between neoliberal and authoritarian forces also created the possibilities for the social revolts.

and colleagues for taking the time to comment on our work. Here we respond on five issues. 'Nothing refutes this'In our article (Selby et al, 2017), we do not contest the idea that anthropogenic climate change may have been a contributory factor in civil war onset in Syria. This is for two reasons. For one, given that everything in today's world is at least indirectly connected -through no more than 'six degrees of separation', according to popular loreit would be absurd to insist that there are absolutely no causal links between greenhouse gas forcing and the Syrian uprising. And second, even if there were no causal links between the two, this would be impossible to demonstrate, since, as we point out in our article, claims of the 'contributory factor of unknown or unspecified significance' variety are essentially unfalsifiable.

This article advances a framework for understanding the political economy of the Egyptian and Arab revolts. After almost three decades of implementing neoliberal economic policies, the Egyptian economy was nevertheless stagnating in the early 2000s and political unrest was increasing. In response two key policy decisions were undertaken by the ruling elite, one to embark on a programme of further liberalisation and privatisation in the hope of attracting foreign direct investment and the other to use the global war on terror framework as a means of repressing internal dissent. While these decisions 'succeeded' in the short term, they also created the conditions which led to the uprisings.