Tom Gawarkiewicz ’15 Co-Publishes Economics Paper on ASEAN

Thomas Gawarkiewicz, who graduated in 2015, has recently published a paper on “The Relationship between Political Tensions, Trade and Capital Flows in ASEAN Plus Three,” with Associate Professor of Economics Yao Tang.

The paper, published by The World Economy, grew out of Gawarkiewicz’s senior thesis.

The ASEAN Plus Three refers to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations trade bloc, which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—plus China, Japan, and Korea.

In the paper, the authors estimate the effects of political tension on trade and capital flows in ASEAN Plus Three countries. “We quantify political tension through text-parsing software reading daily Reuters’ articles from 1990 to 2013 and exclude Brunei and Laos due to sparsity of news coverage,” they explain. “As for capital flows, while long-term capital flows, measured by foreign direct investment, appear to be unaffected by short-term tensions, both a non-democratic government and a history of war negatively affect FDI,” they add.

Gawarkiewicz is currently an analyst at Cornerstone Research.