European integration, which culminated in the completion of the Single Market, the single currency and successive enlargements, is now faced with the question of strategic autonomy. Against this backdrop, the present paper has three objectives. First, it assesses the benefits of EU membership...

On the eve of its 60th anniversary, the gravity model of trade is a "celebrity", due to its intuitive appeal, solid theoretical foundations, and remarkable empirical success. Yet, many economists still view gravity simply as an intuitive but naive reduced-form estimating equation and apply it...

The gravity equation is the workhorse model for analysis of bilateral trade flows. Despite solid theoretical foundations and clear gains from theory-consistent policy analysis, there are still gaps between gravity theory and empirics. This paper focuses on domestic trade flows, and I argue that...

A structural gravity model is used to estimate barriers to services trade across many sectors, countries and time. Since the disaggregated output data needed to flexibly infer border barriers are often missing for services, we derive a novel methodology for projecting output data. The empirical...

We build and estimate a structural dynamic general equilibrium model of growth and trade. Trade affects growth through changes in consumer and producer prices that in turn stimulate or impede physical capital accumulation. At the same time, growth affects trade, directly through changes in...

The objective of this manuscript is to serve as a practical guide for estimations with the structural gravity model. After a brief review of the theoretical foundations, we summarize the main challenges with gravity estimations and we review the solutions to address those challenges. Then, we...

The objective of this manuscript is to serve as a practical guide for evaluation of the general equilibrium (GE) effects of trade policy using the structural gravity model. We try to achieve this objective in four steps. First, we focus on the original Armington-CES gravity model, as a...

We develop a novel two-stage methodology that allows us to study the empirical determinants of the ex post effects of past free trade agreements (FTAs) as well as obtain ex ante predictions for the effects of future FTAs. We first identify 908 unique estimates of the effects of FTAs on different...

The United States introduced Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) as part of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act to dampen the adverse impact of increased trade on workers. Applications to receive TAA require approval from the Department of Labor. Guided by the technical criteria used by the U.S....

We develop a simple estimation procedure for general equilibrium (GE) comparative static analysis of gravity models. Non-linear solvers of estimated models are replaced by (constrained) regressions. Applied economists can more readily generate results, with more intuition about the working of...