This setting lets you change the way you view articles. You can choose to have articles open in a dialog window, a new tab, or directly in the same window.
Open in Dialog
Open in New Tab
Open in same window

American Economic Review: Vol. 93 No. 1 (March 2003)

AER Volume. 93, Issue 1 | leftPrevious ArticleNext Articleright

Expand

Quick Tools:

Print Article Summary Email Link to this Article Export Citation
Sign up for Email Alerts Follow us on Twitter

Explore:

AER - All Issues

AER Forthcoming Articles

Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle

Article Citation

Anderson, James E., and Eric van Wincoop. 2003. "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle ." The American Economic Review, 93(1): 170-192.

DOI: 10.1257/000282803321455214

Abstract

Gravity equations have been widely used to infer trade flow effects of various institutional arrangements. We show that estimated gravity equations do not have a theoretical foundation. This implies both that estimation suffers from omitted variables bias and that comparative statics analysis is unfounded. We develop a method that (i) consistently and efficiently estimates a theoretical gravity equation and (ii) correctly calculates the comparative statics of trade frictions. We apply the method to solve the famous McCallum border puzzle. Applying our method, we find that national borders reduce trade between industrialized countries by moderate amounts of 20-50 percent.

Article Full-Text Access

Full-text Article

Authors

Anderson, James E.
van Wincoop, Eric


American Economic Review



AEA Member Login:


Quick Tools:

Email Link to this Issue

Sign up for Email Alerts

Follow us on Twitter

Subscription Information
(Institutional Administrator Access)

Explore:

AER - Forthcoming Articles

AEA Journals

Virtual Field Journals

AEAweb | AEA Journals | Contact Us