Economics of Summitry: An Empirical Assessment of the Economic Effects of Summits

Since 1975 the leaders of the seven industrial countries (the G-7) have held annual summits to discuss issues of common interest, attempt to coordinate their economic policies, and set goals for their economies. To empirically assess the effects of summit announcements and the degree of compliance with the stated goals on macroeconomic variables is an important, interesting, and well-defined undertaking. The present paper uses fuzzy membership function to model the degree of compliance with the stated goals and a VAR framework to test for the summit effects.