We introduce a new dataset on British exports at the bilateral, commodity-level from 1700 to 1899. We then pit two primary determinants of bilateral trade against one another: the trade-diminishing effects of distance versus the trade-enhancing effects of the British Empire. We find that the...

We propose and construct novel measures of the effectiveness and potential of trade blocs, combining estimation with granular data and simulation with a New Quantitative Trade Model. We deploy our methods and new indexes to quantify the potential benefits from (i) further integration within the...

This paper focuses on the effect of preferential trade agreements and their depth on firm ownership, in particular, along global value chains. It measures shareholder-affiliate ownership links at the country-sector-pair level to discern between vertical and horizontal links. The findings show...

Structural quantitative work in international economics typically models trade costs as a log-linear function of exogenous trade-policy variables. We propose a structural approach that allows for a nonparametric relationship and for treating tariff and nontariff trade-policy variables as...