Reportedly, firms often find it impossible to finance large and long-term projects despite positive net present values. Should governments step in and can their assistance be effective? This paper studies the case of public export credit guarantees in Germany. Covering the default risk of...

Reportedly, firms often find it impossible to finance large and long-term projects despite positive net present values. Should governments step in and can their assistance be effective? This paper studies the case of public export credit guarantees in Germany. Covering the default risk of...

Political risk represents an important hidden transaction cost that reduces international trade. This paper investigates the claim that German public export credit guarantees (Hermes guarantees) mitigate this friction to trade flows and hence promote exports. We employ an empirical trade gravity...

Political risk represents an important hidden transaction cost that reduces international trade. This paper investigates the claim that German public export credit guarantees (Hermes guarantees) mitigate this friction to trade flows and hence promote exports. We employ an empirical trade gravity...

To study the potentially distortionary impact of divergent corporate income tax rates on international trade flows, we use an augmented empirical specification of the gravity model. Incorporating a corporate income tax rate trade barrier measure into a modified gravity model, we capture the...

The objective of this manuscript is to serve as a practical guide for estimations with the structural gravity model. After a brief review of the theoretical foundations, we summarize the main challenges with gravity estimations and we review the solutions to address those challenges. Then, we...

In this paper we use detailed trade and production data and a theoretically consistent model of demand - the Almost Ideal Demand System - to estimate bilateral trade elasticities, the key parameters required for quantification of the effects of the `1992' programme. Initial results for 70 West...