German unification hit the West German economy in a prosperous and appeared as a huge demand shock at least for the first few quarters. This combination resulted in a major increase of imports from the main trading partners of West Germany, which may have helped to cushion recessionary trends...

For a very long time, the areas available for continuous long-distance trade were limited to territories the size of Braudel's Mediterranée (1949). Whatever the commercial organizations (merchants in the Roman or the Fatimid Empires, the Hanseatic League, the Florentine Companies), their trade...

This paper demonstrates that an empirical link between aid and trade exist (for some donor-recipient pairs), but that the nature of this linkage is complex and can take a variety of forms. By identifying this complexity (and variability) we challenge the assertion, often made in debates...