Using confidential microdata from the US Census, we find that the fraction of manufacturing plants that export rose from 21% in 1987 to 39% in 2006. It has been suggested that similar trends in other countries may have been caused by declining costs of entering foreign markets. Our study tests...

France has seen a marked deterioration in its export performance in the last 10 years or so. Previous empirical research pointed out that weak export performance was due to i) vigorous domestic demand; ii) lower mark-ups due to head-to-head competition with Germany; iii) low non-price...

The paper analyzes the increase in transition countries’ exports to their non-traditional trade partners. It uses four different measures of product differentiation to find out the extent that the increase in product variety explains this phenomenon. It is found that opening up to new trade...

Since McCallum’s (1995) finding of surprisingly high border effect on trade between US and Canada, there have been a number of studies on other parts of the world, and improvements made to the gravity model to accurately measure this effect. This paper suggests some other modifications to the...

The paper analyzes the factors behind the reorientation of transition countries’ exports to their non-traditional partners outside their former block. First, the amount of reorientation is calculated using a gravity model. Then, reasons for the cross-country differences in the rate of closing...

The increase in exports to market economies is a good sign, but it is not conclusive about the extent of restructuring of production technologies experienced in transition countries. This paper explores the source of the increase with an analysis of their exports’ quality, interprets the...

After a short background on recent developments in gravity modelling and liberalization agreements in Europe, this paper measures the trade creation and diversion effects of major European agreements based on the results of a correctly specified triple-indexed gravity model with bilateral fixed...

National borders reduce trade, but most estimates of the border effect seem puzzlingly large. We show that major methodological innovations of the last decade combine to shrink the border effect to a mere 28% reduction in international trade ows worldwide. The border effect varies across...

The paper examines the impact of terms of trade shocks on private savings in the transition economies after accounting for the effect of other determinants. Economic agents in the transition economies are subject to tight credit constraints which are more pronounced during bad state of nature....

This paper investigates the effects of both inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on productivity in manufacturing and services sectors. The main novelty is the analysis of the spillover effects of outward FDI that may occur outside the investing firms on the rest of the home...