This paper studies the effect of institutions on trade flows, using a gravity modelapproach. We start from a standard gravity equation that incorporates geographical proximity,language, trade policy and common history. These factors reflect the costs of trade acrossgeographical and cultural...

Ineffective institutions increase transaction costs and reduce trade. This paper shows that differences in the effectiveness of institutions offer an explanation for the tendency of OECD countries to trade disproportionately with each other, and with non-OECD countries.

Formal trade barriers and transport costs explain only part of the resistance to international trade. Search costs on the international market and insecurity of property rights and contract enforcement have recently been emphasized as important intangible barriers to trade. This paper proposes...

This paper explores the phenomenon of ethnic entrepreneurship and migration in developing countries. Our focus is on the decision of migrants to choose a particular site for conducting entrepreneurial activities. A survey of literature is presented in the opening section, in which two...

This paper aims to investigate the entrepreneurial migrants’ preferences for a location for businessactivities in developing countries. In the modelling framework six socio-economic and six socio-cultural variables are used in this study to investigate the migrants’ propensity to stay at...

The market for commercial properties is characterised by extreme heterogeneity in demand. In this paper, we aim to gain more insight in the heterogeneity in demand for employment agglomeration and size of the rental property using a two-stage hedonic approach following Bajari and Benkard (2005)....