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Adrian-Ioan DAMOC - The Persian Pivot and the Reconfiguration of Geopolitical Realism: Iran and Venezuela in Strategic Competition among the United States, China, and Russia

Emmanuel Olusegun STOBER - Coercive Diplomacy in the Gulf and the Limits of the Strike-Forward Strategy: Toward a Middle-Power Coalition for Regional Stability

Sorin-Nicolae CURCĂ - On the Informational Entropy of Economic Shock

Florin DĂNESCU - The Banking Sector as Critical Infrastructure in the Logic of Hybrid Conflict: Post-2014 Legislative Convergence in Central and Eastern Europe and the Case of Romania

Alexandru POPOVICI - The Contribution of the Music Industry to GDP and Employment: A Comparative Analysis

Mohammed AL-NASSERY - Implications of the War in the Middle East: An Analysis of the Economic, Security, Humanitarian, and Political Dimensions

Mihai LĂCĂTUŞ - GDP as a Means, Not an End: Inequality as the Missing Variable in Fiscal Policy Design – A 60-Country Analysis of Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being

Articles on Issue Theme

Geicun MUSTAFA

Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti

This article reframes Islamophobia from a primarily socio-political issue into an economic variable with systemic effects on cross-border exchange. It argues that, in a period of heightened protectionism and deglobalization, Islamophobia operates as an informal barrier to international economic and business relations by reducing trust, raising transaction costs, and amplifying uncertainty and reputational exposure for firms and public actors. The study develops an interdisciplinary analytical framework linking identity-based discrimination, political discourse, and “cultural security” to concrete economic channels: investment decisions, supply-chain restructuring, consumer and producer boycotts, labour mobility, and the escalation of trade disputes through sanctions and informal restrictions. The empirical strategy is comparative, focusing on interactions between Western states and Muslim-majority partners, and examining responses by governments, companies, business associations, and international organizations. By integrating reputational capital and cultural risk into the analysis of non-tariff barriers, the article offers policy-relevant insights for economic diplomacy and corporate risk management under conditions of fragmented globalization.

ŒCONOMICA no. 4/2025

Keywords: Islamophobia, informal trade barriers, non-tariff measures, reputational risk, cultural risk, deglobalization, discrimination and identity politics, sanctions and boycotts, foreign direct investment, labour mobility, global value chains, economic diplomacy

JEL: D74, F14, F21, F22, F51, Z13

Islamophobia as an Informal Trade Barrier: Reputational Risk and the Political Economy of Deglobalization

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