Does trade improve the income levels of the poor and less developed nations? Focusing on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) designated by the United Nations, we construct a new measure of trade cost, based on the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), as an instrument for trade. The BDI reflects the cost of...

In their seminal paper, Brückner and Ciccone (2011) document that a significant effect of democratic change may be triggered by negative transitory economic shocks, and that rainfall can open a democratic window of opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). As a complement, this paper uses...

We estimate the effect of exports on HIV incidence for sub-Saharan African countries, using an instrument related to the Baltic Dry Index. We find that a doubling of exports per capita could increase HIV incidence by about 55% on average.

Despite the onset of globalization, year-by-year cross-country regressions of the gravity model usually suggest that the impediment of geographical distance on bilateral trade is rising, and not declining, over time. This effect of distance is dubbed the distance puzzle. In this paper, we argue...