The paper explores theoretically and empirically why trade intermediaries (TIs) are frequently used as agents for exports to some countries but not to others. We adapt a standard intra-industry trade model with variable export costs (e.g. transport) and fixed export costs (e.g. market access) to...

A structural gravity model is used to estimate barriers to services trade across many sectors, countries and time. Since the disaggregated output data needed to flexibly infer border barriers are often missing for services, we derive a novel methodology for projecting output data. The empirical...

This paper assesses whether the sensitivity of bilateral trade volumes to various trade cost factors is constant or varies across countries. It utilizes a random coeffcients model and analyses a cross-sectional sample of bilateral trade data for 96 countries in 2005. We expect the elasticity of...

Recent literature has highlighted the major contribution of multi-product firms to international trade activity. Such firms ship several product categories to foreign destinations each time they export. Our objective is to document the contribution of product selection to the reaction of firms...

Trade costs are crucial in new economic geography (NEG) models. The unavailability of actual trade costs data requires the approximation of trade costs. Most NEG studies do not deal with the ramifications of the particular trade costs specification used. This paper shows that the specification...

The paper empirically investigates credit access and borrowing costs in Poland's rural financial market. We conduct an econometric analysis based on cross-sectional survey data including formal loans taken in the period 1997-1999. A hedonic regression of the effective interest rate, comprising...