We present a model, in which a small industrialised economy outsources part of its production into a small foreign country which is well endowed with low-skilled labour. We analyse under which conditions sinking trade costs stimulate outsourcing activities, thereby increasing the wage dispersion...

Theoretical and empirical research in economics suggests that bilateral migration triggers bilateral trade through a number of channels. This paper assesses the functional form of the impact of migration on trade flows in a quasi-experimental setting. We provide evidence that the relationship is...

We propose to estimate gravity models by a Hausman and Taylor (1981) 2SLS error components approach. First, this allows to account for the possible correlation of some of the regressors with the unobserved effects, which has been ignored in previous research. Second and in contrast to the Within...

Recent work by Anderson and van Wincoop (2003) establishes an empirical modeling strategy which takes full account of the structural, non-(log-)linear impact of trade barriers on trade in new trade theory models. Structural new trade theory models have never been used to evaluate and quantify...

This paper assesses the role of a larger degree of common language use between the populations of two countries on the so-called extensive product margin of trade. We focus on the overlap of products exported or imported between any pair of countries. The results suggest that the effect of...

One of the oldest and largest literatures in empirical economics is concerned with the estimation of demand and supply of goods, services, and factors across national or subnational borders (see Leamer and Levinsohn, 1995). The respective empirical models specified and estimated are often...

Earlier work established the notion that international terrorism harms international trade. This evidence was based on annual data with responses in the same year as attacks and incidents and on empirical models which ignored general equilibrium effects. We provide evidence that, if at all,...

The measurement of trade costs and their effects on outcome is at the heart of a large quantitative literature in international economics. The majority of the recent significant contributions on the matter assumes that trade consists of a product of exporter-time-specific factors,...

Many empirical gravity models are now based on generalized linear models (GLM), of which the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator is a prominent example and the most-frequently used estimator. Previous literature on the performance of these estimators has primarily focussed on the role of...

This paper studies the causal effect of sharing a common native language on international trade. Switzerland is a multilingual country that hosts four official language groups of which three are major (French, German, and Italian). These groups of native language speakers are geographically...