In GRAVITY WITH GRAVITAS: A SOLUTION TO THE BORDER PUZZLE, Anderson and Van Wincoop (2003) estimate what trade between US states and Canadian provinces would have been if the border between Canada and the United States had not existed. They showed that computing the border effect requires solving a non-linear system of multilateral price indexes. This note shows that the non-linear system can be solved analytically, such that a numerical approximation is no longer needed. The exact solution yields a reduced-form log-linear gravity equation that can be estimated using standard econometric techniques. After estimation, the calculation of treatment effects like the border effect is straightforward. Using the same data and assumptions, I find that the border effect for Canada is half as large as reported by Anderson and Van Wincoop.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis in its series CPB Discussion Papers with number
111.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
David S. Jacks & Christopher M. Meissner & Dennis Novy, 2008.
"Trade Costs, 1870-2000,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 529-34, May.
[Downloadable!]
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)