The article explores whether Germany's position as the world's leading exporter is something special. We apply a standard gravity model estimating bilateral export flows of 184 countries and find that Germany's exports are positively affected by time-invariant factors, like its geographical...

World trade has grown exponentially during the last 60 years. Admittedly, it is not clear if this development can be assigned to international trade agreements like the World Trade Organization or the Generalized System of Preferences as previous empirical studies found contradicting results. In...

The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) was established to promote the exports of low-income countries to industrialized countries in order to support their economic growth and development. However, the design of these schemes is rather complex and the e¤ects of GSP have been found to be...

The well-known question whether regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the multilateral trading system (MTS) are "strangers, friends, or foes" (Bhagwati and Panagariya, 1996) has gained new importance with the widespread proliferation of RTAs in recent years. Based on an extensive data set which...

The economic and fi nancial crisis in 2009 triggered a stronger collapse in German exports compared to imports, with the high external surplus falling considerably. By now, global trade has recovered. The authors have calculated trends in German foreign trade, using a gravitation model. Based on...