Financial stability is an important policy objective since crises are associated with big economic, social, and political costs. Promoting stability requires preventing 'sudden stops' in capital flows, which are events in which foreign financing abruptly disappears. This paper contributes to the...

Ineffective institutions increase transaction costs and reduce trade. This paper shows that differences in the effectiveness of institutions offer an explanation for the tendency of OECD countries to trade disproportionately with each other, and with non-OECD countries.

Migration has become a prominent research theme in geography and regional science and it has been approached from various methodological angles. Nonetheless, a common missing element in most migration studies is the lack of awareness of the overall network topology, which characterizes migration...

This study suggests another explanation of the missing globalization puzzle typically observed in the empirical gravity models. In contrast to the previous research that focused on aggregated trade flows, we employ the trade flows in manufacturing products broken down by 25 three-digit ISIC...

This paper contributes to the immigration literature by generating two unique non-economic quality of life (QOL) indices and testing their role on recent migration patterns. Applying the generated quality of life indices in conjunction with other independent welfare measures to an extended...

This study analyzes the stability of the distance coefficient values over time in the generalized gravity equation of Bergstrand (1989) using both aggregate and disaggregated trade flows among 22 OECD countries recorded for the sample period covering 1970 until 2000. We estimate the gravity...

Policy makers in "small" countries facing trade liberalisation have become concerned with the potential loss of manufacturing employment and output to "large" economies in the presence of economies of scale in production and international transport costs. This paper offers a methodology to...

Transaction costs are a major reason why international trade flows are much smaller than traditional trade theory would suggest. Trust between trading partners lowers transaction costs and may therefore enhance trade. The empirical analysis of this paper shows that more trust leads to more trade...