Discussion on the possibilities for and barriers to income convergence and catch-up growth is at the heart of the debate on European regional economic policy. This study presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of regional productivity growth in Europe, using the most recent Cambridge...

The potential welfare benefits from free movement of people are large. Especially in Europe, actual flows are lower than one would expect on the basis of economic differences between regions and countries. This paper empirically investigates the importance of cultural barriers in explaining the...

Abstract Conventional studies of bilateral trade patterns specify a log-normal gravity equation for empirical estimation. However, the log-normal gravity equation suffers from three problems: the bias created by the logarithmic transformation, the failure of the homoskedasticity assumption, and...

This paper studies the effect of institutions on trade flows, using a gravity model approach. We start from a standard gravity equation that incorporates geographical proximity, language, trade policy and common history. These factors reflect the costs of trade across geographical and cultural...

The intensity of international transactions remains lower than could be potentially justified on the basis of transportation costs alone. This has become known as the ?mystery of the missing trade?. Transaction costs may be responsible for ?under-trading? across national borders. More...

Barriers to international trade are more sizeable than can be accounted for on the basis of formal trade barriers and transport costs alone. Search costs in the international marketplace and insecurity of property and contract enforcement have recently been stressed to explain this observation....

Bilateral trade flows traditionally have been analysed by means of the spatial interaction gravity model. Still, (auto)correlation of trade flows has only recently received attention in the literature. This paper takes up this thread of emerging literature, and shows that spatial filtering (SF)...