Was the collapse of world trade between 1928 and 1937 caused by higher transport costs, increased protectionism or the collapse of the gold standard? Using recent advances in the estimation of gravity equations, I examine the partial and general equilibrium effects of bilateral distance,...

Bilateral trade balances often play an important role in the international trade policy debate. Academic economists understand that they are misleading indicators of competitiveness and of the gains from trade. However, they also recognize their political relevance, calling for accurate...

We propose a simple method to identify the effects of unilateral and non-discriminatory trade policies on bilateral trade within a theoretically-consistent empirical gravity model. Specifically, we argue that structural gravity estimations should be performed with data that include not only...

This paper on Trade Agreements within SSA, is an assessment of the ex post bilateral trade effect of the European Union-African Caribbean Pacific Preferential Trade Agreement (EU-ACP PTA) and sub-regional regional trade agreements (RTAs) on bilateral trade involving SSA countries. The main...

Following closely the analytical approach adopted by Head and Mayer (2004) and Novy (2010), this paper derives a micro-founded bilateral trade cost measure for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as a function of observable domestic and inter-national trade data. The derived measure of trade cost by Novy...

In this paper we revisit the evidence on the effects of time spent on border-crossing procedures for international trade using a theory-consistent structural gravity model. We exploit a rich panel data set including domestic trade flows and employ a recent econometric estimator that exhibits...

We evaluate the impact of firm-specific export subsidies on exports in Colombia. Using a two-stage Heckman selection procedure, we obtain firm-specific predicted subsidy amounts that can be explained by the characteristics that determine the firms' eligibility for the government support and its...

Services form an increasing proportion of the inputs used in manufacturing. We explore empirically whether competition in the service sector affects downstream manufacturing firms' efficiency, via the inputs used. Using French micro-data for services, we calculate proxies for competition in...

In this paper we revisit the evidence on the effects of time spent on border-crossing procedures for international trade using a theory-consistent structural gravity model. We exploit a rich panel data set including domestic trade flows and employ a recent econometric estimator that exhibits...

This paper estimates the effects of trade liberalization on plant productivity. In contrast to previous studies, we distinguish between productivity gains arising from lower tariffs on final goods relative to lower tariffs on intermediate inputs. Lower output tariffs can produce productivity...