The impact of international trade, or “openness”, on economic growth is difficult to quantify because of reverse causality. In this paper, I use recent advances in gravity equation estima- tion to generate a geography-based instrument for openness a la Frankel and Romer (1999). In contrast...

We revisit the association between trade and GDP co-movement for 135 countries from 1970 to 2009. Guided by a simple theory, we introduce two notions of trade linkages: (i) the usual direct bilateral trade index and (ii) new indexes of common exposure to third countries capturing the role of...

This paper revisits the relationship between trade and cross-country GDP correlation for 134 countries from 1970 to 2009. We introduce two notions of trade linkages: (i) direct bilateral trade index and (ii) common exposure to "third" countries capturing the role of trade networks . Both are...

We revisit the association between trade and GDP comovement for 135 countries from 1970 to 2009. Guided by a simple theory, we introduce two notions of trade linkages: (i) the usual direct bilateral trade index and (ii) new indexes of common exposure to third countries capturing the role of...