While Taiwan’s democratization and China’s continuing authoritarianism have often been attributed to the decisions of their leaders, might there, instead, be external factors which have ensured that these two polities would have walked along more or less the same route that they have so far,...

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...