When did Germany become economically integrated? Within the framework of a gravity model, based on a new data set of about 40,000 observations on trade flows within and across the borders of Germany over the period 1885-1933, I explore the geography of trade costs across Central Europe. There...

This paper seeks to reconcile two seemingly contradictory strands in the literature on economic development in the late nineteenth century Habsburg Empire - one emphasizing the centrifugal impact of rising intra-empire of nationalism, the other stressing significant improvements in market...

Why do borders still matter for economic activity? The reunification of Germany in 1990 provides a unique natural experiment for examining the effect of political borders on trade both in the cross-section and over time. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rapid formation of a political and...