The business literature and recent descriptive evidence show that exporting firms typically require the help of foreign trade intermediaries or need to set up own foreign wholesale affiliates. In contrast, conventional trade theory models assume that producers can directly access foreign...

Cultural proximity increases bilateral trade flows through a trade-cost and a bilateral-affinity (preferences) channel. Conventional measures of cultural proximity, such as common language, common religion, etc., do not allow to separately quantify those channels empirically. We argue that...

New trade theory models predict that freer trade increases the spatial concentration of industrial production across countries. While nations with large home markets and central geographical location become increasingly attractive business locations, small peripheral countries gradually...

Increasing-returns-to-scale imperfect competition trade models predict a more than proportionate relationship between the larger country s share in world endowments and its share in producing firms: the so called home market effect (HME). We show that the single-sector Melitz (2003) model...

Cultural proximity increases bilateral trade flows through a trade-cost and a bilateral-affinity (preferences) channel. Conventional measures of cultural proximity, such as common language, common religion, etc., do not allow to separately quantify those channels empirically. We argue that...

Since the 1990s,Germany and other European countries have become more open to trade. The period is characterized by the fall of the iron curtain, the surge of China and its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the introduction of the Euro, the creation of the Schengen area, the...

We introduce search unemployment à la Pissarides into Melitz’ (2003) model of trade with heterogeneous firms. We allow wages to be individually or collectively bargained and analytically solve for the equilibrium. We find that the selection effect of trade influences labor market outcomes....

We introduce search unemployment à la Pissarides into Melitz’ (2003) model of trade with heterogeneous firms. We allow wages to be individually or collectively bargained and analytically solve for the equilibrium. We find that the selection effect of trade influences labor market outcomes....

Trade economists traditionally study the effect of lower variable trade costs. While increasingly important politically, technical barriers to trade (TBTs) have received less attention. Viewing TBTs as fixed regulatory costs related to the entry into export markets, we use a model with...

World trade evolves at two margins. Where a bilateral trading relationship already exists it may increase through time (intensive margin). But trade may also increase if a trading bilateral relationship is newly established between countries that have not traded with each other in the past...