We develop and apply a procedure to flexibly estimate intra-national border barriers and intra-regional trade costs. Bilateral border barriers very significantly depress Canadian inter-provincial trade for some pairs, though the overall effect is rather small. Bilateral distance imposes much...

The incidence of bilateral trade costs is calculated here using neglected properties of the structural gravity model, disaggregated by commodity and region, and re-aggregated into forms useful for economic geography. For Canada's provinces, 1992- 2003, incidence is on average some five times...

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...

This paper provides striking confirmation of the restrictions of the structural gravity model of trade. Structural forces predicted by theory explain 95% of the variation of the fixed effects used to control for them in the recent gravity literature, fixed effects that in principle could reflect...

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....

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...

Why does illegal trade often flourish without formal enforcement, but sometimes fail? Why do illegal trade-reducing policies often fail? Why do States often appear to tolerate illegal trade? A model of trade with cops and robbers provides answers. `Safety in numbers' is a key element: the...

Does globalization widen inequality or increase income risk? In the specific factors continuum model of this paper, globalization widens inequality, amplifying the positive (negative) premia for export (import- competing) sectors. Globalization amplifies the risk from idiosyncratic relative...

This paper rehabilitates the concept of effective rate of protection for use in political economy. The usual definition corresponds to no economically interesting magnitude in general equilibrium. The effective rate of protection for a sector is redefined here as the uniform tariff which is...