This paper examines the impact of transaction costs on economic welfare and development. We extend the static model of Romer (1994), in which transaction costs reduce welfare by the reducing the equilibrium number of intermediate goods, and estimate the welfare losses in the case of domestic...

This paper presents a simple stochastic model of proportionate growth to describe international trade and it applies this set-up to the relationship between export dynamics and economic development. Trade flows are assumed to grow as a geometric Brownian motion while new trade links follow a...