Influential empirical work by Rauch and Trindade (REStat, 2002) finds that Chinese ethnic networks of the magnitude observed in Southeast Asia increase bilateral trade by at least 60%. We argue that this estimate is upward biased due to omitted variable bias. Moreover, it is partly related to a...

Trade economists traditionally study the effect of lower variable trade costs. While increasingly important politically, technical barriers to trade (TBTs) have received less attention. Viewing TBTs as fixed regulatory costs related to the entry into export markets, we use a model with...

Empirical papers show that successful exporting firms either use unaffiliated foreign trade intermediaries or own foreign wholesale subsidiaries. However, conventional trade theory models assume that producers can directly access foreign consumers. We introduce intermediaries in an international...

In the two-country Melitz (2003) model, unilateral trade liberalization is often cast as a reduction of iceberg transportation costs and wages are determined by a linear outside sector, We show that welfare results reverse when wages adjust and trade frictions are revenue-generating tariffs.

We sort out confounding factors in the empirical link between bilateral migration and trade. Using newly available panel data on developing countries’ diaspora to rich OECD nations in a theory-grounded gravity model, we uncover a robust, causal pro-trade effect. Moreover, we do not find...

Recent quantitative trade models treat import tariffs as pure cost shifters so that their effects are similar to iceberg trade costs. We introduce revenue-generating import tariffs, which act as demand shifters, into the framework of Arkolakis, Costinot and Rodriguez-Clare (2012), and generalize...

Purpose Social media has promoted anti-brand communities, which build around the shared aversion to a specific brand. The purpose of this paper is to investigate social media-based anti-brand communities and their effects on the sports team brand in question. Design/methodology/approach The...