Background: This paper measures the aggregate trade costs from 2000 to 2013, and dicusses the impact of China’s aggregate trade costs on comparative advantages and export share of 17 two-digit ISIC manufacturing industries. Methods: This paper takes China’s vertical specialization reality...

In the Belle Époque, Belgium recorded an unprecedented trade boom, but growth in output per capita was lackluster. We seek to reconcile this ostensible paradox. Because of the sharp decline in both fixed and variable trade costs, the trade boom was as much about the expansion in the number of...