This paper utilizes new Dutch transaction-level data on international trade to investigate the microeconomic patterns of Dutch exports. First, we show that self-selection based on ex-ante productivity drives firms' export decisions, which we subsequently relate to various sources of fixed...

Our contribution uses trade in value added statistics to assess the causes of the recent world trade slowdown. We conclude that world trade elasticity has fallen due to a combination of regional and cyclical changes during the economic crisis. A cyclical factor is the lower cumulative trade...

A Single Market for services in the European Union is not yet a reality. The European Commission launched proposals that would remove some negative trade impacts caused by national regulation differences. We apply a general equilibrium model (WorldScan) to assess what economic benefits the...

The Rome Treaty that forms the basis for the European Union (EU) states that goods, services, capital and labour can move freely between the member states. This paper empirically investigates the functioning of the European internal market for services, and especially the role played by the...

Europe’s market for services is fragmented by many regulatory barriers. The Services directive proposed by the European Commission aims to integrate national services markets by reducing these barriers. Several studies indicate that bilateral trade and foreign direct investment in services...

The paper develops a stand-alone and testable gravity model to explain international patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI). The core model is based on knowledge-based gravitational forces that are directly or indirectly linked to a country's economic mass (GDP). The micro-economic part of...

The paper models the links between public and firm-level knowledge processes. The knowledge-capital (KC) theory assumes that firms use their private knowledge assets to set up foreign subsidiaries. Countries with large outward FDI stocks should have a relative abundance of proprietary knowledge...

The first of both short essays deals with two structural constraints that distinguish services markets from e.g. markets for manufacturing products. The 'nearness restriction' requires that producer and consumer of the service product are present on the same location. The 'non-storability...

The paper develops a new stand-alone structural gravity model for explaining bilateral FDI patterns. We employ the model to analyse the impact of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and other policies on bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI). We use the...

The paper tests the predictions of models of international trade with heterogeneous firms. The results based for the services industry cor- respond with most of the prediction. Exporting firms are more productive than comparable non-exporting services firms, by several productivity measures. In...