This paper provides a minimalist derivation of the gravity equation and uses it to identify three common errors in the literature, what we call the gold, silver and bronze medal errors. The paper provides estimates of the size of the biases taking the currency union trade effect as an example....

International economic integration yields large potential welfare effects, even in a static constant returns competitive world economy. Our method is novel. The effect of border barriers on trade flows is often inferred from gravity models. But their rather atheoretic structure precludes welfare...

Gravity-based cross-sectional evidence indicates that currency unions stimulate trade; cross-sectional evidence indicates that trade stimulates output. This paper estimates the effect that currency union has, via trade, on output per capita. We use economic and geographic data for over 200...

In our European Economic Review (2002) paper, we used pre-1998 data on countries participating in and leaving currency unions to estimate the effect of currency unions on trade using (then-) conventional gravity models. In this paper, we use a variety of empirical gravity models to estimate the...

A gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade. The panel data set used includes bilateral observations for five years spanning 1970 through 1990 for 186 countries. In this data set, there are over one hundred...

We develop a simple (incumbent versus entrant) strategic deterrence model to study the economic and geopolitical interactions underlying international trade-related infrastructure projects such as the Panama Canal. We study the incentives for global geopolitical players to support allied...

We study how international trade and the exporting decisions of establishments affect establishment creation over the business cycle in a general equilibrium model. The model captures two key features of establishment and exporter dynamics: i) new establishments start small and grow over time...

We develop a dynamic multi-country general equilibrium model to investigate forces acting on the global economy during the Great Recession and ensuing recovery. Our multi-sector framework accounts completely for countries' trade, investment, production, and GDPs in terms of different sets of...

The effects of geography and productivity on the global pattern of production are captured here in a specific factors gravity model. Simple enough for sharp results, the model is yet rich enough to contain the high dimensional productivity frictions in production and distribution of a many...