Given the distance proxies for trade costs, the onset of globalization implies that geographical distance would matter less for trade. However, year-on-year regressions of a log-linearized gravity model estimated by the ordinary least squares (OLS) method usually suggest that the negative impact...

Both trade theories and empirical evidence have provided strong support for the gravity model. However, its applications in air transport research remain relatively sparse. A review of the air transport literature employing gravity models in the last ten years shows that most of the studies have...

This paper uses a unique micro dataset of Chinese private firms surveyed in 2000 to investigate whether having a more highly educated entrepreneur affects a firm's performance. Identifying educational effects has been shown to be empirically challenging because it is difficult to overcome the...

Does trade improve the income levels of the poor and less developed nations? Focusing on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) designated by the United Nations, we construct a new measure of trade cost, based on the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), as an instrument for trade. The BDI reflects the cost of...

Despite the onset of globalization, year-by-year cross-country regressions of the gravity model usually suggest that the impediment of geographical distance on bilateral trade is rising, and not declining, over time. This effect of distance is dubbed the distance puzzle. In this paper, we argue...