National borders matter...where one draws the lines too

Vincent Vicard and Emmanuelle Lavallée
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Emmanuelle Lavallée: LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: The fact that crossing a political border dramatically reduces trade flows has been widely documented in the literature. The increasing number of borders has surprisingly attracted much less attention. The number of independent countries has indeed risen from 72 in 1948 to 192 today. This paper estimates the effect of political disintegration since World War II on the measured growth in world trade. We first show that trade statistics should be considered carefully when assessing globalization over time, since the definition of trade partners varies over time. We document a sizeable resulting accounting artefact, which accounts for 17% of the growth in world trade since 1948. Second, we estimate that political disintegration alone since World War II has raised measured international trade flows by 9% but decreased actual trade flows (including inter-regional trade) by 4%.

Keywords: Trade; Commerce; Frontières; Trade Statistics; Political Disintegration; Borders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01548193v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Canadian Journal of Economics, 2013, 46 (1), pp.135-153. ⟨10.1111/caje.12008⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: National borders matterwhere one draws the lines too (2013)
Working Paper: National borders matter... where one draws the lines too (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01548193

DOI: 10.1111/caje.12008

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