The optimism surrounding aid for trade (AfT) led scholars and practitioners to probe its link with trade performance of aid-recipient countries in Africa. In the absence of formal evaluation guidelines, most previous studies, using aggregate data, have looked into the impacts of AfT on exports...

Alibaba's Taobao is China's dominant C2C e-commerce platform. Relying on novel transaction level data from its electronics category, this paper examines the roles of distance as well as seller and buyer experience in Chinese e-commerce. Our estimate of a gravity model shows that the distance...