The Gravity Equation in International Trade
Michele Fratianni
No 307, Working Papers from Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali
Abstract:
This chapter offers a selective survey of the gravity equation (GE) in international trade. This equation started in the Sixties as a purely empirical proposition to explain bilateral trade flows, without little or no theoretical underpinnings. At the end of the Seventies, the GE was "legitimized" by a series of theoretical articles that demonstrated that the basic GE form was consistent with various models of trade flows. Empirical applications of GE expanded to cover a variety of issues, such as the impact of regional trade agreements, national borders and currency unions on trade, as well as the use of the equation to sort out the relative merit of alternative trade theories. A new wave of studies is now concentrating on the general equilibrium properties of the GE and finer econometrics points. The renewed interest of the academic profession in the development of the GE is undoubtedly driven by the equation's empirical success.
Keywords: borders; currency unions; gravity equation; regional trade agreement; trade theories (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E58 F15 F33 G15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2007-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)
Downloads: (external link)
http://docs.dises.univpm.it/web/quaderni/pdf/307.pdf First version, 2007 (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: The Gravity Equation in International Trade (2007) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anc:wpaper:307
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers from Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maurizio Mariotti ().