Abstract

The establishment of economic ties between Syrian refugees and their home country has been severely constrained by legal, political, and institutional barriers following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. This project examines instead how the presence of Syrian refugees influences trade among host countries, with a particular focus on the EU and MENA regions. Using bilateral trade data from 2000–2023 and focusing on manufacturing sectors, the study employs two complementary approaches: a difference-in-differences design exploiting variation in refugee hosting across countries, and a structural gravity framework estimated via PPML. Preliminary results show that a 10% increase in Syrian refugee populations across trading partners is associated with a 0.2–0.4% rise in bilateral trade, with stronger effects in textiles sector. These findings suggest that refugees, constrained from direct trade with Syria, foster alternative linkages as consumers, entrepreneurs, and network facilitators among their host countries.