This paper provides a minimalist derivation of the gravity equation and uses it to identify three common errors in the literature, what we call the gold, silver and bronze medal errors. The paper provides estimates of the size of the biases taking the currency union trade effect as an example....

Massive intra-Asian economic integration has been accompanied by very little institution building. This paper considers whether Asia needs new institutions by drawing lessons from the EU’s supranational integration sequence and EFTA’s intergovernmental sequence. Sequencing theory is...

The stumbling-bloc argument asserts that regionalism hinders MFN tariff cutting. If this was of first-order importance over previous decades, we should detect this in the levels of the tariffs. Using tariff line data for 23 large trading nations we find that MFN and PTA tariffs are complements,...

Based on theoretical distinctions suggested by the heterogeneous firms trade model and the quality heterogeneous firms trade model, we classify exports at the HS 6-digit level as being characterised by either quality or price competition. We find a high proportions of quality-competition goods...

This paper explores the growth implications of regional integration. From the theory, it identifies the ‘footprints’ that such growth should leave in the data. It then checks the data on the four poor EU nations for such footprints. Prima facie evidence for Ireland, Portugal and Spain...