In this era of globalization how do we explain the "home bias" unexpectedly large distance effects, and lagged adjustment patterns visible in international exchange? In this paper, I argue that in the real world, the identity and reliability of potential exchange partners are seldom the data...

"We document the behavior of trade prices during the Great Trade Collapse of 2008-2009 using transaction-level data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. First, we find that differentiated manufactures exhibited marked stability in their trade prices during the large decline in their trade...