Exploring the role of political alliances on natural resource trade: a cross-sectional analysis of global gas commerce

The aim of this thesis is to understand to what extent international trade in natural resources is explained by the economic models that are proposed by studies in the field of international economics, and how political factors can influence this trade. Firstly, the theories on international trade between states are examined in a general way, before moving the focus to the field of natural resources. An econometric analysis is then proposed to concretely verify how economic variables affected gas exports and imports in the year 2012, taking into consideration the gravity model, most commonly used for international trade, adding other control variables to represent political factors, such as the presence of alliances. The result indicates that political alliances have a significant positive effect on trade volume in this model, but only when not controlling for country fixed effects. Further investigations are needed to more accurately test the validity of the model by extending the analysis to a larger dataset, examining a range of years.