This paper assesses the role of a larger degree of common language use between the populations of two countries on the so-called extensive product margin of trade. We focus on the overlap of products exported or imported between any pair of countries. The results suggest that the effect of...

Trade economists have for long considered gravity models to estimate unexhausted potentials for bilateral trade. Similar to the discrepancy between "normal" and "actual" bilateral trade, one may ask the question about the difference between "normal" and actual bilateral multinational activity....

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...

Whether a firm is able to attract foreign capital and whether it may participate at the export market depends on whether the fixed costs associated with doing so are at least covered by the incremental operating profits. This paper provides evidence that success for some firms in attracting...

This paper suggests a quantifiable multi-sector-multi-country economic model of goods and services production and consumption. It calibrates overall (variable and fixed) costs to market-specific sales by sector and decomposes these costs into observable and unobservable components. In an...

Since the revival of the gravity literature in the early nineties most work has been done with cross-section data. Just a few more recent contributions made use of panel data. So far that research left open the question whether to treat time and country effects as random or fixed. This note...

This paper implements a panel data approach for studying the determinants of and relationships between bilateral economic activities in terms of both trade and foreign direct investment between the EU member states. The familiar equation for testing the determinants of bilateral exports is...