This paper uses the spread of disease as a proxy to measure economic interactions. Based on a case study of the Black Death (1346-51) in the Mediterranean region and Europe, we find geographic, institutional, and cultural determinants of trade. To achieve this we create and empirically test a...

Since the work of FEENSTRA (2002), the standard ANDERSON & VAN WINCOOP (2003) Gravity Model has been estimated using a fixed effects approach. However, a fixed effects approach has a major drawback: it does not allow for the estimation of exporter- and importer-invariant variables. Thus,...

We consider a difference-in-differences setting with a continuous outcome, such as wages or expenditure. The standard practice is to take its logarithm and then interpret the results as an approximation of the multiplicative treat- ment effect on the original outcome. We argue that a researcher...

Since the work of FEENSTRA (2002), the standard ANDERSON & VAN WINCOOP (2003) Gravity Model has been estimated using a fixed effects approach. However, a fixed effects approach has a major drawback: it does not allow for the estimation of exporter- and importer-invariant variables. Thus,...

This paper investigates the relationship between outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and both exports and imports from Japan. Using the Poisson pseudomaximum likelihood (PPML) estimator developed by Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2006) to deal with the problem of zero trade flows when...

This paper investigates the relationship between outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and both exports and imports from Japan. Using the Poisson pseudomaximum likelihood (PPML) estimator developed by Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2006) to deal with the problem of zero trade flows when estimating...