This paper studies the importance of intangible barriers to trade in explaining variation in disaggregate international trade. The analysis is based on a sample of 55 countries for the year 2000. We explicitly focus on the importance of institutional and cultural dimensions of distance. Our...

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.

Fixed effects (FE) in panel data models overlap each other and prohibit the identification of the impact of ''constant'' regressors. Think of regressors that are constant across countries in a country-time panel with time FE. The traditional approach is to drop some FE and constant regressors by...

With the advent of globalization, economic and financial interactions among countries have become widespread. Given technological advancements, the factors of production can no longer be considered to be just labor and capital. In the pursuit of economic growth, every country has sensibly...

We measure the impact of low cost transport by rail in Malawi on the dispersion of agricultural commodities prices across markets, by exploiting the quasi experimental design of the nearly total collapse of domestic trade by rail in January 2003, due to the destruction of a railway bridge at...

Working with a mix of panel data on goods and services trade for the OECD for 1994-2004, combined with social accounts data (i.e. data on intermediate linkages) for 78 countries benchmarked to the panel midpoint, we examine the role of services as inputs in manufacturing, with a particular focus...

To serve foreign markets, firms can either export or set up a local subsidiary through horizontal Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The conventional proximity-concentration theory suggests that FDI substitutes for trade if distance between countries is large, while exports become more important...

How much does a nation spend on resources to 'grease the wheels of trade'? To examine this question the Dutch economy is used as an exemplary case as the Netherlands are known as a nation of traders. This image was derived in the seventeenth century from successes in long distance trade,...

We analyze the dynamics of Chinese comparative advantage as measured by export shares and the Balassa index using 3-digit and 4-digit sectors for the period 1970 – 1997. We use novel tools to identify periods of rapid structural change and the persistence of comparative advantage, such as...