One of the most important consequences of the transition in Central and Eastern Europe has been the dismantling of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). It is argued in this paper that the abrupt loss of trading partners for the former CMEA countries and the Newly Independent States...

We suggest that bilateral gravity equations augmented by ad hoc measures of absolute supply-side country differences are misspecified. Building on Haveman and Hummels (2004), we develop and test an alternative specification rooted in incomplete specialization that views bilateral gravity...