Conventional wisdom in economic history suggests that conflict between countries can be enormously disruptive of economic activity, especially international trade. Yet nothing is known empirically about these effects in large samples. We study the effects of war on bilateral trade for almost all...

The Millennium Round of MTNs, which was stillborn in Seattle, was supposed to have initiated wide-sweeping changes to the world's trading system. This paper deals with the impact on the German economy of some changes that might have been forthcoming from proposed liberalization strategies. It...

Empirical research on the gravity model of international trade in the wake of Rose (2000) affirms that currency union formation doubles or triples trade. Currency unions could, however, also be established precisely because trade among their members was already high. In OLS estimation, this...

The paper examines why ‘globaphobia’ seems to be more prevalent among labour in the United States than in Europe. It argues that globalization has generated more wealth, but also more income inequality and adjustment problems, in America than in Europe. In the United States, the median voter...

For Africa, a regional customs union is unlikely to realise net welfare gains (in the sense of trade creation dominating trade diversion) which cannot be attained through unilateral trade liberalization. Unilateral reform has often failed in Africa, however. A regional customs union tied to...

We develop a model where trade liberalization leads to skill-biased technological change, which in turn raises the relative return to skilled labour. As firms get access to a larger market, they have incentives to choose a more skill-intensive technology because a lowering of variable costs...

Transaction costs are a major reason why international trade flows are much smaller than traditional trade theory would suggest. Trust between trading partners lowers transaction costs and may therefore enhance trade. The empirical analysis of this paper shows that more trust leads to more trade...

This paper evaluates firms' exporting responses to BRI and considers their heterogeneity in ownership types, product types, regional origin and trade mode. This is done by analyzing firm-product-destination level customs data from 2011 to 2015 in a gravity model framework. Our empirical results...

The significance of a common language in foreign trade hinges on translation as well as the ability to communicate directly. In fact, without admitting the facility of translation from one or two selected languages, it is impossible to explain adequately the impact of a common language on...

In this paper we test the well-known hypothesis of Obstfeld and Rogoff (2000) that trade costs are the key to explaining the so-called Feldstein-Horioka puzzle. Using a gravity framework in an intertemporal context, we provide strong support for the hypothesis and we reconcile our results with...