Without the rule of law, traders who incur trading costs can be held up by counter-parties who are stronger in anarchic bargaining. The favourable terms which the latter extract can overcrowd that side of the market, dissipating the benefits. We establish plausible necessary and sufficient...

We model imperfect contract enforcement when repudiators and their victims default to spot trading. The interaction between the contract and spot markets under improved enforcement can exacerbate repudiation and reduce contract execution, harming all traders. Improved contract execution benefits...

The gravity model in economics was until relatively recently an intellectual orphan, unconnected to the rich family of economic theory. This review is a tale of the orphan's reunion with its heritage and the benefits that have flowed from it. Gravity has long been one of the most successful...

We estimate geographic barriers to export trade in nine service categories for Canada's provinces from 1997 to 2007 using the structural gravity model. Constructed Home, Domestic and Foreign Bias indexes (the last two new) capture the direct plus indirect effect of services trade costs on...

This paper infers the terms of trade effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTA's) with the structural gravity model. Using panel data methods to resolve two way causality between trade and FTA's, we estimate direct FTA effects on bilateral trade volume in 2 digit manufacturing goods from 1990-2002....

We develop a structural gravity model that introduces scale effects in bilateral trade. Scale effects and incomplete passthrough give two channels through which exchange rates have real effects on trade patterns. Estimates from Canadian provincial trade data identify these effects through their...

Specialization alters the incidence of manufacturing trade costs to buyers and sellers, with pro-and anti-globalizing effects on 76 countries from 1990-2002. The structural gravity model yields measures of Constructed Home Bias (the ratio of predicted local trade to predicted frictionless local...

What kind of tariff reform is likely to raise welfare in situations where tariff revenue is important? Uncertainty about specification and risk from imprecise parameter estimates of any particular specification reduce the credibility of simulation estimates. A promising alternative is to develop...

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...

Mutual causation of predation and trade induces novel effects of commercial policy in this paper. The model can explain trade volume responses to market widening initiatives that are otherwise puzzlingly 'too big' or 'too small'. Efficient commercial policy (broadly defined) depends crucially on...