Place names, or toponyms, provide insight into the initial geographical characteristics of settlements. We present a unique dataset of 3,705 German toponyms that includes the date of the first historical record mentioning the settlement and the date it was granted city rights. We show that the...

The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has had disruptive effects on international trade. As part of its ‘Global Britain’ strategy, in the wake of Brexit, the UK is pursuing a series of Free Trade Agreements with countries around the world, including Canada, Japan,...

For reasons of analytical tractability, new economic geography (NEG) models treat geography in a very simple way: attention is either confined to a simple 2-region or to an equidistant multi-region world. As a result, the main predictions regarding the impact of e.g. diminishing trade costs are...

The aim of this paper is to test for the relevance of spatial linkages for Dutch (outbound) FDI. To do so, and based on recent FDI theories, we estimate a spatial lag model to assess the importance of spatial linkages for Dutch FDI to 18 host countries. As a determinant of FDI, space or...

Trade costs are crucial in new economic geography (NEG) models. The unavailability of actual trade costs data requires the approximation of trade costs. Most NEG studies do not deal with the ramifications of the particular trade costs specification used. This paper shows that the specification...

It is sometimes argued that news reports in the media suffer from biased reporting. Mullainathan and Shleifer (2002) argue that there are two types of media bias. One bias, called ideology, reflects a news outlet's desire to affect reader opinions in a particular direction. The second bias,...

There are various ways to indicate the importance of international trade. In this paper, we use the ‘labor footprint’ concept to gain new insights into the implications of trade for employment. We focus on the US, but also provide information on 39 other, mostly developed, countries for the...

Traditional trade theory assumes that countries are dimensionless points. Recent research shows, however, that the internal geography of countries is important for the effects on trade. One aspect of internal geography is the uneven spatial distribution of factors of production. Factors of...

Technological progress and trade potentially affect wages and employment. Technological progress can make jobs obsolete and trade can increase unemployment in import competing sectors. Empirical evidence suggests that both causes are important to explain recent labour market developments in many...

The trade literature often treats countries as dimensionless points, which is a strong assumption. Agglomeration or lumpiness of production factors within countries can affect the national pattern of trade. In this paper we analyze comparative advantage patterns for 22 cities and 4 regions for...