International migrants contribute to bilateral trade creation if their presence reduces trade costs or entails additional demand for goods from their source countries. However, only the trade-cost channel matters for beneficial welfare gains from migration. Using new data on stocks of...

Cultural proximity may influence bilateral imports through a preference and a trade-cost channel. In empirical gravity models, conventional measures such as common language or religion fail to separately identify those channels. We use bilateral score data from the Eurovision Song Contest, a...

Cultural proximity is an important determinant of bilateral trade volumes. However, empirical quantification and testing are difficult due to the elusiveness of the concept and lack of observability. This paper draws on bilateral score data from the Eurovision Song Contest, a very popular...

International migrants contribute to bilateral trade creation if their presence reduces information costs or entails additional demand for goods from their source countries. Using new data on stocks of foreign-born individuals by skill class, we try to separately quantify those two channels. We...

Cultural proximity increases bilateral trade flows through a trade-cost and a bilateral-affinity (preferences) channel. Conventional measures of cultural proximity, such as common language, common religion, etc., do not allow to separately quantify those channels empirically. We argue that...

Neuere Freihandelsabkommen wie die geplante Transatlantische Handels- und Investitionspartnerschaft (TTIP) beinhalten den Abbau regulatorischer Unterschiede. Die Überwindung technischer Barrieren verursacht im Unterschied zu klassischen Instrumenten der Handelspolitik wie Zöllen und Quoten...