Trade Costs, Market Access and Economic Geography: Why the Empirical Specification of Trade Costs Matters

Maarten Bosker and Harry Garretsen

No 2071, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Trade costs are a 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 of trade costs matters. Estimations of a NEG wage equation for a sample of 80 countries show how the relevance of the key NEG variable, market access, depends upon the trade costs specification. Our conclusion is that NEG needs to (re-)examine the sensitivity of its empirical findings to the handling of trade costs.

JEL-codes: F10 F12 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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