Closing borders has always been a typical reaction to pandemics in the history of humanity, and the responses to Covid-19 mark no difference. Initiatives to limit the diffusion of the virus has put the closure of national borders under the spotlight worldwide. However, national scale offers a...

The events in Ukraine were an impulse for Slovak foreign policy, media, and non-governmental organisations to focus their attention on the eastern neighbour. There was hope that the crises in Ukraine would intensify cross-border cooperation between both countries, especially after pressure from...

Over the last 20 years the trade literature repeatedly documented the trade-reducing effects of inter- and intra-national borders. Thereby, the puzzling size and persistence of observed border effects from the beginning raised doubts on the role of underlying political borders. However, when...

This paper identifies a "border" effect in the absence of a border. The finding that trade between East- and West-Japan is 23.1 to 51.3 percent lower than trade within both country parts, is established despite the absence of an obvious east-west division due to historical borders, cultural...

International trade in manufacturing goods has risen strongly over the past decades, contributing to the expansion of global value chains (GVCs). This paper studies how two factors contributed to this rise since 1970: (i) declining "border effects" that are arguably related to the ICT revolution...