Cutting trade costs, especially those stemming from non-tariff measures, is a growing priority for policy makers. One way to achieve this is for countries to improve their co-operation on regulatory matters. An avenue open to governments is to include provisions related to international...

One of the best established empirical results in international economics is that bi-lateral trade decreases with distance. Although well-known, these results have not been systematically analyzed before. We examine 1052 distance effects estimated in 78 papers. Information collected on each...