Results

CEP discussion paper

Brief yet effective: group counseling and college access for disadvantaged students

Large socioeconomic gaps in higher-education access and completion persist even among similarly talented students with access to generous funding, pointing to an important role for information frictions and unequal suppo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Growth insured: export credit insurance and trade

We estimate the causal effect of short-term export credit insurance (ECI) on firm-level exports using administrative data from China?s export credit agency merged with customs and tax records. Exploiting quasi-random var...Read more...

Journal article

Spatial Economic Analysis:

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualising it as an information...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualizing it as an information...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Innovation union: costs and benefits of innovation policy coordination

What is the scope for international cooperation in innovation policy in economies closely integrated via trade? We address this question by building a two-region innovation-driven growth model with endogenous technology ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Random placement but real bias

Many studies exploit the random placement of individuals into groups such as schools or regions to estimate the effects of group-level variables on these individuals. Assuming a simple data generating process, we show th...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The lasting impact of 9/11 on Muslim integration in America

Understanding the long-term social impact of historical events provides insights into current global debates on immigration, integration and Islamophobia. In a study of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Shadi Farahza...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Deep integration and trade: UK firms in the wake of Brexit

How does dismantling deep integration affect international trade? This column uses firm-level customs data to study the impact of Brexit on UK goods trade. The authors find that in the short term, exit from the Single Ma...Read more...

Blog

Bank Underground:

Forbearance lending as a crisis management tool

The Bank of England Agenda for Research (BEAR) sets the key areas for new research at the Bank over the coming years. This post is an example of issues considered under the Prudential Architecture Theme which focuses on ...Read more...

Blog

LSE USA Politics and Policy:

The lasting impact of 9/11 on Muslim integration in America

With ongoing global debates on immigration, integration, and rising Islamophobia, understanding the long-term social impacts of historical events is more important than ever. Shadi Farahzadi studies the effects of the 9/...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Deep integration and trade: UK firms in the wake of Brexit

How does dismantling deep integration affect international trade? This paper studies the consequences of economic disintegration by estimating the impact of Brexit on goods trade by UK firms. The UK's exit from the EU's ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The integration penalty: impact of 9/11 on the Muslim marriage market

Major sociopolitical events can have lasting impacts on integration through changing marriage preferences. Marriage markets, due to their unregulated nature, both reflect and affect integration in society. I use 9/11 as ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

International friends and enemies

We examine whether, as countries become more economically dependent on a trade partner, they realign politically toward that trade partner. We use network measures of economic exposure to foreign productivity growth deri...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Workers in finance from lower socio-economic backgrounds don't have equal voice

Employee voice refers to the informal and voluntary sharing of ideas, suggestions, concerns or opinions about work-related matters, with the goal of driving improvement or change. When voice is suppressed or marginalised...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Beyond the enrolment gap: Financial barriers and high-achieving, low-income students' persistence in higher education

Little is known about what influences high-achieving, low-income students' persistence in higher education, despite extensive work on their enrolment decision. This paper investigates the role of credit constraints. Usin...Read more...

Journal article

PLoS ONE :

Access to digital finance: Equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Has financial fair play changed European football?

In 2011 UEFA, the governing body of European football, introduced the Financial Fair Play Regulation (FFPR), consisting of a set of financial restraints to be met by clubs as a prerequisite for participation to its compe...Read more...

Journal article

Sports Economics Review:

Has financial fair play changed European football?

In 2011 UEFA, the governing body of European football, introduced the Financial Fair Play Regulation (FFPR), consisting of a set of financial restraints to be met by clubs as a prerequisite for participation to its compe...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Labor Economics :

Testing means-tested aid

We estimate the effect of an unexpected institutional financial aid (IFA) award on student outcomes using administrative data collected from nine universities, exploiting variation in IFA schedules within and across univ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The local labor market effects of modern manufacturing capital: evidence from France

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation te...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The signaling value of legal form in debt financing

We examine if a startup's legal form choice is used as a signal by credit providers to infer its risk to default on a loan. We propose that choosing a legal form with low minimum capital requirements signals higher defau...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Import competition, trade credit and financial frictions in general equilibrium

We analyze the role of trade credit and financial frictions in the propagation of international trade shocks along the supply chain. First, we show empirically that exposure to import competition from China increased the...Read more...

Journal article

Annual Review of Economics:

Expecting Brexit

The Brexit vote precipitated the unraveling of the United Kingdom's membership in the world's deepest economic integration agreement. This article reviews evidence on the realized economic effects of Brexit. The 2016 Bre...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Operations Management:

Working from home and firm resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted firms' operations. To cope with the crisis, many firms have allowed their employees to work from home (WFH). We examine whether a firm's WFH capacity has increased its resilience durin...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Financial crises as drivers of populism: a new channel

Financial crises have severe economic costs. This column shows that they also entail major political costs. It argues that the global financial crisis, and associated Great Recession, represents a watershed for populism ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Trade, structural transformation, and development: evidence from Argentina 1869-1914

We provide new theory and evidence on the role of external and internal integration in structural transformation and economic development, using Argentina's integration into the world economy in the late nineteenth centu...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

Vertical integration and foreclosure: evidence from production network data

This paper studies the prevalence of potential anticompetitive effects of vertical mergers using a novel data set on U.S. and international buyer-seller relationships and across a large range of industries. We find that ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firms and inequality

In the last few decades, dramatic changes have been documented in the US business landscape. These include rising productivity and pay dispersion between firms, higher aggregate markups (of price over variable costs), gr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Common Market Studies:

The effect on foreign direct investment of membership in the European Union

This article explores the impact of EU membership on foreign direct investment (FDI). It analyses empirically how the effects of such deep integration differ from other forms and investigates what drives these effects. U...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Financial system architecture and the patterns of international trade

Countries differ in the extent to which their financial systems rely on banks or on financial markets. We offer a model featuring a complex relationship between countries? financial system architecture and their comparat...Read more...

Journal article

Scandinavian Journal of Economics:

Living in the shadow of the past: financial profiles and well-being

We consider the link between individual financial profiles over time and well-being, as measured by life satisfaction. In particular, we look at annual self-reported financial worsening and improvement information for mo...Read more...

Journal article

Health Economics (United Kingdom):

Childhood circumstances and young adulthood outcomes: the role of mothers' financial problems

We here consider the cognitive and noncognitive consequences on young adults of growing up with a mother who reported experiencing major financial problems. We use UK data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The impact of non-tariff barriers on trade and welfare

Deep trade agreements are widespread and have taken the world beyond tariff liberalization in goods trade. As the importance of global supply chains and the services sector increased across the world, shallow tariff redu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Markups, intangible capital and heterogeneous financial frictions

This paper studies the interaction between financial frictions, intangible investment decisions, and markups at the firm level. In our model, heterogeneous credit constraints distort firms' decisions to invest in cost-re...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

Children, unhappiness and family finances

The common finding of a zero or negative correlation between the presence of children and parental well-being continues to generate research interest. We consider international data, including well over one million obser...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gravity in international finance: evidence from fees on equity transactions

We shed light on the impact of institutional quality and information barriers on trade in financial services using a novel panel data set on revenue earned on domestic and cross-border equity securities underwriting tran...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International financial flows and misallocation

We study the impact of international financial flows on credit allocation exploiting the early 2000s boom of capital inflows in Italy. Using detailed bank-firm matched data we compare the patterns of credit allocation of...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Development Economics:

The belt and road initiative: reshaping economic geography in Central Asia?

This paper develops a computable spatial equilibrium model of Central Asia and uses it to analyze the possible effects of the Belt and Road Initiative on the economy of the region. The model captures international and su...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing global production: theory and evidence from just-in-time supply chains

Global value chains are highly fragmented across countries and dominated by a few large multinational firms. But the challenges of an increasingly difficult international business environment are raising the question of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intellectual property and the organization of the global value chain

This paper introduces the concept of intangible assets in a property rights model of sequential supply chains. Firms transmit knowledge to their suppliers to facilitate input customization. Yet, to avoid knowledge dissip...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... The long-term effects of financial distress in childhood

Is there a relationship between childhood circumstances and outcomes later in life? Andrew Clark and colleagues consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences for young adults whose families experienced major fina...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Vertical integration and foreclosure: evidence from production network data

This paper studies the prevalence of vertical market foreclosure using a novel dataset on U.S. and international buyer-seller relationships, and across a large range of industries. We find that relationships are more lik...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Innovation union: costs and benefits of innovation policy coordination

We build a two-region endogenous growth model to analyse the gains from innovation policy cooperation in an economic union. The model is calibrated to two blocks of the EU: the old and new members. R&D subsidy coordinati...Read more...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

The end of free college in England: implications for enrolments, equity, and quality

Despite increasing financial pressures on higher education systems throughout the world, many governments remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of tuition fees, and some countries and states where tuition fees ha...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Host-country financial development and multinational activity

This paper evaluates the influence of host-country financial conditions on the global operations of multinational firms. Using detailed U.S. data, we establish that financial development in a country is associated with r...Read more...

Journal article

Review of World Economics:

Are all trade agreements equal? The role of distance in shaping the effect of economic integration agreements on trade flows

How does geographic distance affect the impact of trade agreements on bilateral exports, and through what channels? This paper examines this questions in a gravity model context for different types of goods for 185 count...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Childhood circumstances and young adulthood outcomes: the role of mothers' financial problems

We here consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences on young adults of growing up with a mother who reported experiencing major financial problems. We use UK data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monetary policy, product market competition and growth

In this paper we argue that monetary easing fosters growth more in more credit-constrained environments, and the more so the higher the degree of product market competition. Indeed when competition is low, large rents al...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Organizing global supply chains: input-output linkages and vertical integration

We study whether and how the technological importance of an input ? measured by its cost share ? is related to the decision of whether to ?make? or ?buy? that input. Using detailed French international trade data and an ...Read more...

CEP industrial strategy paper

Unlocking SME productivity: review of recent evidence and implications for the UK?s industrial strategy

Improving productivity is one of the main goals of the government's Industrial Strategy. Since the UK is a nation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the question arises whether SMEs have a role to play in indu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Come together: firm boundaries and delegation

We jointly study firm boundaries and the allocation of decision rights within them by confronting an incomplete-contracts model with data on vertical integration and delegation for thousands of firms around the world. In...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Beyond tariff reductions: what extra boost from trade agreement provisions?

There is a growing recognition that for developed economies, like the UK, tariff-free market access is just one of a number of measures that ease cross-border trade flows. Modern trade agreements go beyond tariff reducti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Economic integration, foreign investment and international trade: the effects of membership of the European Union

This paper investigates the importance of economic integration in simultaneously fostering foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade. These have rarely been analyzed jointly using contemporary econometric m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The end of free college in England: implications for quality, enrolments and equity

Despite increasing financial pressures on higher education systems throughout the world, many governments remain resolutely opposed to the introduction of tuition fees, and some countries and states where tuition fees ha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Equity crowdfunding and early stage entrepreneurial finance: damaging or disruptive?

Equity crowdfunding (ECF) offers founders of new ventures an online social media marketplace where they can access a large number of investors who, in exchange for an ownership stake, provide finance for business opportu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Goods and factor market integration: a quantitative assessment of the EU enlargement

The economic effects from labor market integration are crucially affected by the extent to which countries are open to trade. In this paper we build a multi-country dynamic general equilibrium model with trade in goods a...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

The long-term effect of digital innovation on bank performance: an empirical study of SWIFT adoption in financial services

We examine the impact on bank performance of the adoption of SWIFT, a network-based technological infrastructure and set of standards for worldwide interbank telecommunication. We construct a new longitudinal dataset of ...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Survive another day: using changes in the composition of investments to measure the cost of credit constraints

We introduce a novel empirical strategy to measure the size of credit shocks. Theoretically, we show that credit shocks reduce the value of long-term relative to short-term investments. Empirically, we can therefore comp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Financial system architecture and the patterns of international trade

Countries differ on the extent to which their financial system relies on banks or on the financial market. We offer a model featuring a possible two-way relationship between countries? financial system architecture and t...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Quantitative Easing of an International Financial Centre: How Central London Came So Well Out of the Post-2007 Crisis

This paper documents and seeks to explain the remarkably positive employment trends of a central area of London in the years since the onset of the financial crisis. The volatility of this economy since the 1980s had sug...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Testing means-tested aid

Inequalities do not end once students enter higher education. Yet, the majority of papers on the effectiveness of higher education aid examine its impact on college enrolment. In this paper, we provide evidence on the ca...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The persistence of a banking crisis

This paper analyses the effects of bank lending on GDP and employment. Following losses on international financial markets in 2008/09, a large German bank cut its lending to the German economy. I exploit variation in dep...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The unbearable divergence of unemployment in Europe

Unemployment in Europe is not only ?too high?, it is also too different across countries that belong to a monetary union. In this paper we i) document this increasing heterogeneity, ii) try to explain it and iii) draw fr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Contracting and the division of the gains from trade

This paper examines the microstructure of import markets and the division of the gains from trade among consumers, importers and exporters. When exporters and importers transact through anonymous markets, double marginal...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Financial constraints in search equilibrium: Mortensen and Pissarides meet Holmstrom and Tirole

The Great Recession has indicated that firms' leverage and access to finance are important for hiring and firing decisions. It is now empirically established that bank lending is correlated to employment losses when cred...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

European integration and the gains from trade

This chapter discusses whether and how .new quantitative trade models.(NQTMs) can be fruitfully applied to quantify the welfare effects of trade liberalization, thus shedding light on the trade-related effects of further...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

External integration, structural transformation and economic development: evidence from Argentina

This paper uses the natural experiment of Argentina?s integration into world markets in the late-nineteenth century to provide evidence on the role of internal geography in shaping the effects of external integration. We...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Bankers and their bonuses

We analyse the role of financial sector workers in the huge rise of the share of earnings going to those at the very top of the pay distribution in the UK. Rising bankers' bonuses accounted for two-thirds of the increase...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade integration, market size and industrialization: evidence from China's national trunk highway system

Large scale transport infrastructure investments connect both large metropolitan centers of production as well as small peripheral regions. Are the resulting trade cost reductions a force for the diffusion of industrial ...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Medium and long run prospects for UK growth in the aftermath of the financial crisis

The productivity performance of the UK economy in the period 1990-2007 was excellent. Based entirely on pre-crisis data, and using a two-sector growth model, I project the future growth rate of GDP per hour in the market...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Neighbors, Knowledge, and Nuggets: Two Natural Field Experiments on the Role of Incentives on Energy Conservation

There is increasing research on the exogenous impact of descriptive social norms on economic behavior. The research to date has a number of limitations: 1) it has not de-coupled the impact of the norm and the knowledge r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The financial resource curse

This paper presents a model of financial resource curse, i.e. episodes of abundant access to foreign capital coupled with weak productivity growth. We study a two-sector, tradable and non-tradable, small open economy. Th...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Bankers and their bonuses

The pay of financial sector workers (?bankers?) is a focus of public concern especially since the onset of the financial crisis. We document the remarkable rise in the share of aggregate pay going to those at the very to...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Survive Another Day: Using Changes in the Composition of Investments to Measure the Cost of Credit Constraints

We introduce a novel empirical strategy to measure credit shocks. Theoretically, we show that credit shocks reduce the value of long term investments relative to short term ones. Under the (conservative) assumption that ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Long and Short-Term Effects of the Financial Crisis on Labour Productivity, Capital and Output

The behaviour of labour productivity in the United Kingdom since the onset of the recession in early 2008 constitutes a puzzle. Over four years after the recession began labour productivity is still below its previous pe...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Has the growth of real GDP in the UK been overstated because of mis-measurement of banking output?

If official figures overstated the growth of banking output in the UK in the recent boom, does this mean that GDP growth was overstated too? The answer is no. It is truer to say that if banking output was overstated then...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Causal Effect of Credit Guarantees for SMEs: Evidence from Italy

We evaluate the effectiveness of a partial credit guarantee program implemented in a large Italian region using unique microdata from a broad set of firms. Our results show that the policy was effective to the extent tha...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Optimal Policy for Macro-Financial Stability

In this paper we study whether policy makers should wait to intervene until a financial crisis strikes or rather act in a preemptive manner. We study this question in a relatively simple dynamic stochastic general equili...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The doomsday cycle turns: who's next?

Peter Boone and Simon Johnson believe that there are more and worse financial crises to come....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reserve Accumulation, Growth and Financial Crises

We present a model that reproduces two salient facts characterizing the international monetary system: i) Faster growing countries are associated with lower net capital inflows and ii) Countries that grow faster accumula...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Capital Controls or Exchange Rate Policy? A Pecuniary Externality Perspective

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a new policy paradigm has emerged in which old-fashioned policies such as capital controls and other government distortions have become part of the standard policy toolkit...Read more...

CEP report

Fiscal consolidation during a depression

In 2009-10, the UK's budget deficit was about 11 per cent of GDP. A credible plan for fiscal consolidation was introduced in the UK over the fiscal years 2011-12 to 2016-17. In this paper, we assess the impact of the sca...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Global Value Chains During the Great Trade Collapse: A Bullwhip Effect?

This paper analyzes the performance of global value chains during the trade collapse. To do so, it exploits a unique transaction-level dataset on French firms containing information on cross-border monthly transactions m...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Policy uncertainty: a new indicator

The damaging impact of economic uncertainty on growth has been reasonably well studied - but what happens when there is uncertainty about economic policy-making? Nicholas Bloom and colleagues have developed a measure of ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paying for Performance: Incentive Pay Schemes and Employees' Financial Participation

We present new comparable data on the incidence of performance pay schemes in Europe and the USA. We find that the percentage of employees exposed to incentive pay schemes ranges from around 10-15 percent in some Europea...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Portfolio Allocation and International Risk Sharing

Recent contributions have shown that it is possible to account for the so-called consumption-real exchange anomaly in models with goods market frictions where international asset trade is limited to a riskless bond. In t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Financial Crises and Macro-Prudential Policies

Stochastic general equilibrium models of small open economies with occasionally binding financial frictions are capable of mimicking both the business cycles and the crisis events associated with the sudden stop in acces...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Revisiting Overborrowing and Its Policy Implications

This paper analyzes quantitatively the extent to which there is overborrowing (i.e., inefficient borrowing) in a business cycle model for emerging market economies with production and an occasionally binding credit const...Read more...

Book

The Future of Finance
The LSE Report

This book presents a novel approach to the reform of the world’s financial system, starting with the basic question, what is a financial system for? It shows that the existing system has become far more complic...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The long-term effect of digital innovation on bank performance: an empirical study of SWIFT adoption in financial services

We examine the impact on bank performance of the adoption of SWIFT, a network-based technological infrastructure for worldwide interbank telecommunication. We construct a new longitudinal dataset of 6,848 banks in 29 cou...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Towards a New Architecture for Financial Stability: Seven Principles

In this paper we use insights from organizational economics and financial regulation to study the optimal architecture of supervision. We suggest that the new architecture should revolve around the following principles: ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Currency Unions in Prospect and Retrospect

We critically review the recent literature on currency unions, and discuss the methodological challenges posed by the empirical assessment of their costs and benefits. In the process, we provide evidence on the economic ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Determinants of Vertical Integration in Export Processing: Theory and Evidence from China

Using detailed product-level export data for China and a variant of the Antras and Helpman (2004) model that includes investments in component search, we examine the sectoral determinants of foreign direct investment (FD...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crisis? What Crisis? Currency vs. Banking in the Financial Crisis of 1931

This paper examines the role of currency and banking in the German financial crisis of 1931 for both Germany and the U.S. We specify a structural dynamic factor model to identify financial and monetary factors separately...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Housing Markets and the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009: Lessons for the Future

An unsustainable weakening of credit standards induced a US mortgage and housing bubble whose consumption impact was amplified by innovations altering the collateral role of housing. In countries with more stable credit ...Read more...

CEP report

Bankers' Pay and Extreme Wage Inequality in the UK

It is well known that the distribution of income in the United Kingdom has widened considerably in the last three decades. This rise has been a result of a widening at both the top and bottom of the wage distribution. Mo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Productivity and Firm Selection: Quantifying the 'New' Gains from Trade

We discuss how standard computable equilibrium models of trade policy can be enriched with selection effects without missing other important channels of adjustment. This is achieved by estimating and simulating a partial...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International Trade Integration: A Disaggregated Approach

This paper investigates the sources and size of trade barriers at the industry level. We derive a micro-founded measure of industry-specific bilateral trade integration that has an in-built control for time-varying multi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trading Places: Employers, Unions and the Manufacture of Voice

Using nationally representative workplace data for Britain we show that over the last quarter century union voice ? especially union-only voice ? has been associated with poorer climate, more industrial action, poorer fi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Was Germany Ever United? Evidence from Intra- and International Trade 1885-1933

This paper asks whether Germany was ever an economically integrated area. I explore the geography of trade costs in a new data set of about 40,000 observations on regional trade flows within and across the borders of Ger...Read more...