We review and interpret the main theoretical developments in the gravity literature from its very early, a-theoretical applications to the latest structural contributions. We also discuss challenges and implement methods to estimate empirical gravity equations. We finish with a presentation and...

Recent work on the effects of currency unions (CUs) on trade stresses the importance of using many countries and years in order to obtain reliable estimates. However, for large samples, computational issues limit choice of estimator, leaving an important methodological gap. To address this gap,...

We propose and apply methods to quantify the impact of national institutions on international trade and development. We are able to identify the direct impact of country-specific institutions on international trade within the structural gravity framework. Our approach naturally addresses the...