Skip to main content

Vox:
Estimating border effects in international trade: user beware

8 May 2016

Article by Cletus C. Coughlin and Dennis Novy
Borders impede trade, and a major objective of research in international trade has been to identify by how much. This column argues that bilateral trade data can give a misleading picture. Larger countries have inherently smaller border effects because their data aggregate over more space and economic activity. Trade economists need to think harder about how slicing up the map at the level of countries drives estimates of important policy variables.

This article was published by VOX on May 8, 2016
Link to article here

Related publications
'Estimating Border Effects: The Impact of Spatial Aggregation', Cletus C. Coughlin and Dennis Novy, Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No.1429, May 2016

Related links
Dennis Novy webpage
Trade Programme webpage

Read more... Vox