There exists a growing body of literature which looks at export decisions made by firms. Most studies focus on developed countries and do not explore whether different behavioral patterns prevail over the firm size distribution. This paper aims at filling this gap in the literature by analyzing...

Trade facilitation policy focuses on accelerated and transparent shipment processing to reduce trade costs. A common measure to evaluate processing frictions is the time it takes to import. In this paper we translate import processing times to costs. Our theory considers that shipment processing...

In this paper, we estimate the trade effects of a transit system upgrading that streamlines border processing in developing countries. Our empirical approach combines transaction level export data from El Salvador with unique data that distinguishes export flows that were processed on the...

Trade barriers have been declining around the world over the last five decades. Countries reduced their tariffs unilaterally as well as concertedly in the framework of regional integration agreements. As a consequence, trade flows among economies have substantially intensified. According to...

Information problems involved in trading differentiated goods are <italic>a priori</italic> acuter than those associated with trading more homogeneous products. The impact of export promotion activities intending to address these problems can therefore be expected to differ across goods with different degree of...

Several countries have implemented programmes to support their firms’ internationalization efforts. Their impacts are likely to be heterogeneous over firm size categories because these programmes are primarily intended and expected to benefit smaller companies. Whether this is or not the case...

The book explores the impact of transport costs on trade in Latin America and the Caribbean, and argues that transport costs have assumed an unprecedented strategic importance to the region. The region can no longer rely solely on trade agreements, proximity, labor costs and an abundant supply...

Despite progress in communication technologies, lack of information still severely handicaps companies seeking to operate in international markets. Furthermore, the investments that these companies must make to gather the information required to trade with foreign markets may yield reduced...