We assume that all trade costs take the iceberg form and find that distance is responsible for about 40% of the world trade costs. Our results are robust to the choice of the trade model, the sample period, the country groups in terms of income level, and the trade cost elasticity of trade...

In this work we use an augmented Eaton-Kortum model to estimate the distribution costs of a group of consumption goods for 60 countries. Our results accord well with the distribution costs derived directly from the input-output tables for a slightly different group of goods. Our counterfactual...

This paper studies the intellectual property protection in a global setting where the protection is based on the patentability requirement. When two countries with similar research efficiencies open trade with each other, the world patentability requirement will rise above the autarky levels of...

Economists have argued that rich and poor countries face asymmetric trade costs. In this short note, we propose a simple trade cost function to model trade cost asymmetry at the trade barrier level. Our trade cost function can greatly improve the performance of the gravity model and shed light...