Trade openness and political distortions

In this paper, we explore the relationship between international trade openness and two major political distortions, uncertainty, polarization. We consider measures of openness, expenditures number partners, as well their volatility. As distortions characteristics country are endogenously related, instrument uncertainty by standard deviation effective leaders’ ages a minimum age leaders country's neighbors. find that reduces level increases volatility while polarization negatively affects both openness. propose simple theoretical model provides intuition on