Dr. Kendrick Morales is an applied economist specializing in the economics of conflict, international trade, and political economy. He is particularly interested in examining causal analyses related to conflict, with my current research focused on overcoming issues of reverse causality between the economy and various forms of conflict such as religious hostilities and terrorism.

Primarily, he uses both economic and instrumental variables approaches to shed light on overlooked empirical questions such as: how does international trade influence religious hostilities and terrorism? His paper with Prosper Raynold and Jing Li entitled "The empirical relationship between commitment enhancement devices and terrorism," was published in Applied Economics in 2018.