The development of pre-industrial Europe was driven by the expansion of trade. This paper describes the patterns of trade and shows how they can be understood in terms of differences in trading costs. It discusses how the different levels of trade?from local to transoceanic-contributed, both...

In pre-industrial Europe, growth was driven by the expansion of trade, and the expansion of trade was driven by falling trading costs. This paper discusses the mechanisms linking these processes: profit-seeking behavior by merchants, changes in the organization of production, technological...

Did long-distance trade in the Roman world operate on a sufficiently big scale to increase the overall size of markets, enabling specialization of labor and thus Smithian growth? Although the Malthusian model represents the dominant view to describe the economic performance of the ancient world,...

This paper identifies a fundamental challenge in the development of input-output databases of the world economy intended for analysis of alternative scenarios with a model of the world economy. Primary data sources for individual economies generally do not use the same sectoral classification...

Knowledge and intangibles such as R&D, know-how, intellectual property, brands – and more broadly – intellectual capital - are nowadays regarded as the key drivers of competitiveness and wealth creation. Despite their importance, intangibles are not yet properly measured. There are also some...

The transition into non-traditional export activities attracts important policy and academic attention. Using international trade data, we explore how alternative linkages relate to the take-off and acceleration of export industries. Concretely, we run a horse-race among alternative Marshallian...

The transition into non-traditional export activities attracts important policy and academic attention. Using international trade data, we explore how alternative linkages relate to the take-off and acceleration of export industries. Concretely, we run a horse-race among alternative Marshallian...

This study attempts to bring new perspectives on the death of distance hypothesis by examining to what extent the intensification of ICT has contributed to attenuate the effect of distance on international trade issues. Our analysis is based on an extended gravity model constituted of 2827...

In the mid-2000s, the production of hearing aids shifted almost entirely to 3D printing. Using difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods, this paper examines the effects of this shift on trade flows. The analysis finds that trade increased roughly 60 percent following the...

In 2019 and the early months of 2020, global trade faced two major albeit very different shocks, namely the United States-China trade war and the cascading response of the countries around the world to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the former situation involved a pair of centrally-placed trading...