Trade between regions separated by a sea border is affected by specific transport costs that have not been considered by the border effects literature. Among these are the existence of a time barrier, the need to combine different transport modes, or to pay fees and taxes for the use of public...

Cultural factors and especially common languages are well-known determinants of trade. By contrast, the knowledge of foreign languages was not explored in the literature so far. We combine traditional gravity models with data on fluency in the main languages used in EU and candidate countries....

The RTAs with trade facilitation provisions have been expected to generate a larger net trade-creating effect and complement the discriminatory feature of RTAs but have yet to be empirically proven. Recognizing the limitations of existing studies, we conducted a quantitative analysis on the...

The eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU) brought and will bring full membership to countries whose trade barriers with the EU had to a large extent already been removed under Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) during the 1990s. We employ a theory-based new version of a gravity equation,...

In this paper, we develop a new version of a theory-based gravity equation to properly account for the relative price indices initially proposed by Anderson and van Wincoop (2003). The partially time-varying character of our multilateral resistance variables overcomes the bias present in earlier...

Agrifood standards impede trade by increasing compliance costs, but they can also enhance trade by signalling quality. This paper disentangles the trade costs and demand-enhancing effects of two important standards-technical barriers to trade, and sanitary and phytosanitary measures-on (i)...

We estimate the effect of RTAs on bilateral exports by means of a gravity model analyzing its sensitivity to different specifications and methods. RTAs generate a sizable positive effect. However, shifting to country-pair and time-varying fixed effects systematically reduces coefficients....

Ineffective institutions increase transaction costs and reduce trade. This paper shows that differences in the effectiveness of institutions offer an explanation for the tendency of OECD countries to trade disproportionately with each other, and with non-OECD countries.

In view of the deferred start of negotiations for the modernization of the Customs Union between the EU and Turkey (CU-EUT), we look back and analyse the ex post trade consequences of the CU-EUT. Employing up-to-date econometric best practices for regional integration agreements, we quantify...