How do trade costs affect international trade? This paper offers a new approach. We rely on a flexible gravity equation that predicts variable trade cost elasticities, both across and within country pairs. We apply this framework to the effect of currency unions on international trade. While we...

This paper provides a general equilibrium analysis of the trade effects of the formation of a currency union, and of its subsequent enlargement to include an economically dissimilar country. Furthermore, it investigates how economic dissimilarities among countries affect the magnitude of the...