The gravity model has extensively been used in estimating the effectiveness of a number of RTAs in the world. However, many previous studies that assess the effectiveness of African RTAs using gravity model produce contrasting results and are characterize by two main shortcomings. Firstly, these...

One of intriguing aspects of African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) is the extent of multi-membership, where many Africa countries are members of more than one RTA. Using a gravity model for 25 countries and the years 1980-2006 we measure the extent of multi-membership and compare its impact...

Does the selection effect of trade work solely through competition from imports, or does the export market further contribute to firm selection? This paper provides a re-interpretation of the different mechanisms in terms of selection on profitability - rather than productivity - and derives...

The dynamics of export market exit and firm closure have found limited attention in the new heterogeneous-firms trade literature. In fact, several of the predictions on firm survival and exit stemming from this new class of models are at odds with the stylized facts. Empirically, higher...

Trade liberalization comes about through reductions in various types of trade costs. This paper introduces, apart from real variable (i.e. iceberg) and fixed export costs, two partially redistributed tariffs into a Melitz (2003) model. We present comparable results for welfare effects and...

This paper addresses welfare effects from trade liberalization in a heterogeneous-fi?rms trade model including the empirically important per-unit (i.e. additive) trade costs in addition to the conventional iceberg (i.e. multiplicative) and fi?xed trade costs. The novel contribution of the paper...

Empirical literature has established a positive link between firm productivity and export status, yet notable exceptions exist. The present paper shows that the underlying theory (Melitz, 2003) is in fact able to accommodate the rule as well as the exception. The fulcrum of the argument is the...

It is widely perceived that globalization squeezes public sector activities by making taxation more costly. This is attributed to increased factor mobility and to a more elastic labour demand due to improved scope for relocation of production and thus employment across countries. We argue that...

The European integration process has removed barriers to trade within Europe. We analyze which integration step has most profoundly influenced the trending behavior of export openness. We endogenously determine the single most decisive break in the trend, account for strong cross-country...

The marginal costs based representation of firm productivity in the Melitz [Melitz, M.J., 2003. The impact of trade on intra-industry reallocations and aggregate industry productiv- ity. Econometrica 71 (6), 1695-1725] model, predicts positive exporter productivity premia. We show that this...