We know that euro-area member countries have absorbed asymmetric shocks in ways that are inconsistent with a common nominal anchor. Based on a reformulation of the gravity model that allows for such bilateral misalignment, we disentangle the conventional trade cost channel and trade effects...

Cultural proximity increases bilateral trade flows through a trade-cost and a bilateral-affinity (preferences) channel. Conventional measures of cultural proximity, such as common language, common religion, etc., do not allow to separately quantify those channels empirically. We argue that...

The paper considers whether Sweden should join the EMU as based on general equilibrium (GE) effects through reduced trade barriers linked to the single cur-rency. We use in this evaluation a gravity model for trade in Europe derived and estimated in the paper, and the estimates of trade barriers...

The purpose of this paper is to explain the relation between the Border Effect and industrial concentration. This is achieved by founding this relation on the Home Market Effect and testing the robustness of this foundation through an application to the European Single Market. A sectorial...

World trade evolves at two margins. Where a bilateral trading relationship already exists it may increase through time (intensive margin). But trade may also increase if a trading bilateral relationship is newly established between countries that have not traded with each other in the past...

This paper introduces a market size dependent firm entry cost into the Melitz (2003) model. This is a relatively small generalisation, which preserves the analytical solvability of the model. Nevertheless, our model yields several new results that are in line with data. First, the average...

The paper presents an alternative derivation of the gravity equation for foreign trade, which is explicitly based on monopolistic competition in the export markets and which is more general than previously in the literature. In contrast to the usual specification, our model allows for the...

Using a gravity model, this article presents an analysis of aggregate trade flows aimed at identifying China's impact on Latin America's trade. The results obtained indicate that: i) China's growth in the last years implied a growing supply of exports to this market from most countries in the...