The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on international trade varies along several dimensions, including the type of product, the size of firm and over time. In this note, I provide evidence of systematic variation in the trade response to the pandemic along another, previously unexplored...

This paper examines data on trade flows between West German Bundesländer (federal states) and East Germany to explore the effect of national borders on trade. Although the data cover only a small fraction of intra-German trade flows, I find a home bias of about factor 2.2; West German shipments...

This paper provides a new attempt to examine the relationship between an economy's exposure to foreign trade and its degree of urban concentration. In contrast to previous work, which is often based on rich cross-country data sets, the analysis is focused exclusively on European countries,...

In 1999, eleven European countries formed the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); they abandoned their national currencies and adopted a new common currency, the euro. Several recent papers argue that the introduction of the euro has led (by itself) to a sizable and statistically significant...

The Group of Eight (G8) is an unofficial forum of the heads of state of the eight leading industrialized countries. In this paper, I examine the effect of the G8 (and its predecessor, the G7) on international trade. I use a gravity model of trade; the panel data set covers bilateral trade between...

Politicians travel extensively abroad, for various reasons. One purpose of external visits is to improve bilateral economic relations. In this paper, I examine the effect of state visits on international trade. I use a large data set covering the travel activities of the heads of state of...

This paper analyzes empirically differences in the size of central bank boards (or monetary policy committees) across countries. We discuss the possible determinants of a board's size. The empirical relevance of these factors is examined using a new dataset that covers the de jure membership...

This paper explores official trade data to identify patterns of smuggling in international trade. Our main measure of interest is the difference in matched partner trade statistics, i.e., the extent to which the recorded export value in the source country deviates from the reported import value...

How many people should decide about monetary policy? In this paper, we take an empirical perspective on this issue, analyzing the relationship between the number of monetary policy decisionmakers and monetary policy outcomes. Using a new data set that characterizes Monetary Policy Committees...