Despite enormous academic interest in international trade costs and keen policy interest in efforts to mitigate them, so far there is very little hard evidence on the impacts of trade facilitation efforts. This paper exploits a dramatic reduction in the rate of physical inspections by Albanian...

A large literature has shown that geographic frictions reduce trade, but has not clarified precisely why. We provide insights into why such frictions matter by examining which parts of trade these frictions reduce most. Using data that tracks manufacturers' shipments within the United States on...

We note that calibration parameters in a multi-country Armington trade model play a role similar to that of econometric residuals: they allow the model to fit the data exactly. We use this premise to evaluate the "fit" of a standard multi-country computable general-equilibrium model. We find...

Theory-consistent gravity equations are the focus of recent efforts to understand large international border effects. This study extends the current literature by examining asymmetric border frictions in the context of non-linear multi-lateral resistance regressors. Asymmetries are important...

We note that calibration parameters in a multi-country Armington trade model play a role similar to that of econometric residuals: they allow the data to fit the model exactly. We use this premise to evaluate the 'fit' of a standard multi-country computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. We...