The paper analyzes whether the political regime of a country influences its involvement in international trade. Firstly, we develop a theoretical model that predicts that autocracies trade less than democracies. Secondly, we test the predictions of the model empirically using a panel of more...

This paper studies the effect of sharing a common native language on international trade. Switzerland hosts three major native language groups which adjoin countries sharing the same native majority languages. In regions close to the internal language border the alternate major language is...

We develop a general equilibrium model of trade with multiple countries and industries in the spirit of Eaton and Kortum (2002) and Bernard, Eaton, Jensen, and Kortum (2003). We structurally estimate the parameters of the model and calibrate it to data on 33 OECD countries and one country that...

This paper analyses how exchange rate shocks are transmitted at the firm level and establishes a nexus to firm-level export activity. Using precise survey data from a sample of Swiss firms, I find that an appreciation increases the probability of a decrease in firm-level costs, prices and...

This paper investigates the impact of energy policies on the export performance of firms. There has been a long policy debate on potentially negative impacts of cost-increasing energy policies on international competitiveness. We use firm-level data from three countries with similar industry...