The robust empirical finding that exporting firms are systematically different from firms that merely serve domestic consumers has inspired the development of a new brand of trade theory, the theory of heterogeneous firms and trade. The establishment of a canonical model due to Melitz (2003) has...

Our paper deals with econometric developments for the estimation of the gravity model which lead to convergent parameter estimates even when a correlation exists between the explanatory variables and the specific unobservable characteristics of each unit. We implement panel data econometric...

The main goal of regionalization is the creation of free trade areas and the guarantee for countries to accede to a widened market. Many studies dealing with the effects of regional free trade agreements on trade flows already exist in the economic literature and the explosion in the number of...

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries...

Based on static analysis, a number of studies argue that forming a RTA is more likely to raise welfare if member countries are "natural trading partners," while other studies claim the opposite. This paper considers the argument from a dynamic viewpoint by examining the impact of trade with...

This paper analyses the trade balance effects of Europe agreements (EA) between the EU-15 and four new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC-4) using both static and dynamic panel data approaches. Specifically, the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM, Blundell and Bond, 1998)...

This paper explores the role of country asymmetries for trade and industrial policies with heterogeneous firms. Our analysis delivers a number of novel results. First, trade policies, infrastructure policies and industrial policies which improve the business conditions in one country have...

The risk of default that business firms face is very significant and differs widely across countries. This paper explores the links between countries' business conditions and international trade embedment and the default risk at the country level from a theoretical point of view. Our main...

The present paper provides an overview of literature on the shift to services. It follows the three dimensions of structural change - final demand, the inter-industry division of labor and inter-industry productivity differences. It first looks at the ‘classics’, however (Fisher (1935),...

Simon Rottenberg’s seminal 1956 article in the Journal of Political Economy, 1956, is generally accepted as the starting point for the development of the economics of sport. While he recognised that certain features of professional sports leagues were unusual he saw little reason to treat this...