GeoDist makes available the exhaustive set of gravity variables used in Mayer and Zignago (2005). GeoDist provides several geographical variables, in particular bilateral distances measured using citylevel data to assess the geographic distribution of population inside each nation. We have...

Advances in communication technology make it possible for workers in India to supply business services to head offices located anywhere. This has the potential to put high-wage workers in direct competition with much lower paid Indian workers. Service trade, however, like goods trade, is subject...

We construct a three-country, two-bloc, multi-product trade model in which tariff agreements between customs union members are binding whereas inter-bloc tariff agreements are self-enforcing. Our main objective is to explore how the liberalization of trade between customs union members (i.e. the...

Security threats have moved neighbouring countries to form regional integration arrangements (RIAs), including the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, 1951), the EEC (1957), and various RIAs among developing countries. This paper shows that an RIA – together with domestic taxes – is an...

While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...

We show that the negative impact of financial crises on trade is magnified for destinations with longer time-to-ship. A simple model where exporters react to an increase in the probability of default of importers by increasing their export price and decreasing their export volumes to...

This paper analyzes empirically the relationship between civil wars and international trade. We first show that trade destruction due to civil wars is very large and persistent and increases with the severity of the conflict. We then test the presence of two effects that trade can have on the...

This paper examines empirical strategies that have been or could be used to evaluate the importance of agglomeration and trade models. This theoretical approach, widely known as ‘New Economic Geography’ (NEG), emphasizes the interaction between transport costs and firm-level scale economies...