The collapse in world trade volumes at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 was exceptional by historical standards. This paper shows that world demand (to which trade has become more responsive in recent decades) can explain most of the collapse in world trade, but that tight credit conditions...

This paper presents new estimates of country-specific international transport costs for 21 OECD countries over the period 1973-2005. The methodology is based on direct measures of air, maritime, and road transport costs rather than on cif/fob ratios or other balance of payments data employed in...

This paper provides a detailed description of recent research to re-estimate and re-specify the international trade volume and price equations that are used in the OECD Economics Department to analyse international trade developments. New panel data estimates of the factors affecting export...

This paper provides a detailed description of recent research to re-estimate and re-specify the international trade volume and price equations that are used in the OECD Economics Department to analyse international trade developments. New panel data estimates of the factors affecting export...

This paper presents descriptive evidence of specialisation trends and investigates empirically their causes and consequences, analysing the role of policies in this process. Then, based on the insights from the backward looking analysis, it draws global trade and specialisation scenarios up to...

Brazil, like other natural resource-exporting countries, has benefited from a sharp increase in commodity prices over the last few years. To investigate the possible impact of terms-of-trade gains on the real economy, this paper estimates normalised quadratic input demand and output supply...

Brazil, like other natural resource-exporting countries, has benefited from a sharp increase in commodity prices over the last few years. To investigate the possible impact of terms-of-trade gains on the real economy, this paper estimates normalised quadratic input demand and output supply...

After a recession of historic proportions, an export-led recovery is gaining traction in Ireland. The pace of recovery, however, varies sharply across sectors. While export-oriented manufacturing and services, led by large multinationals, have reached record-high levels of output,...

L’ouverture de la Tunisie aux échanges internationaux et son intégration dans les chaines de valeur mondiales ont fortement progressé depuis le milieu des années 90, témoignant des avantages comparatifs du pays. Les exportations ont sensiblement augmenté, tirées par le secteur...

Several studies have reported a large negative effect of national borders on the volume of trade. We provide new estimates of the border effect for continental Europe using road rather than great circle – or “as-crows-fly” – distance. Road distances for 48 180 European city pairs have...