The consequences on international trade of colonial rule have received an increasing attention. This paper investigates the effect of independence on trade with a focus on former French colonies. Thanks to an original dataset including data on pre-independence bilateral trade for former French...

Empirical evidence suggests that belonging to an empire favours trade by lowering transaction costs and establishing preferential trade agreements. Does the end of an empire invert this effect, and if so, through which channels? This paper uses an original dataset to explore the impact of...

This paper develops a method to measure difficulties in market access over a large set of countries (both developing and developed) and industries, during the period 1980-2006. We use a micro-founded heterogeneous-consumers model to estimate the impact of national borders on global and regional...