There is a well-established literature finding that the Canada-U.S. border has a large dampening effect on trade, is asymmetric, and differs across provinces. In this paper, I demonstrate that the standard gravity model used to obtain these results provides biased estimates of the volume of trade. I attribute this to heterogeneity bias and reestimate the effects of the border using a gravity model that allows for heterogeneous gravity equations. Doing so does not alter the general results of existing studies, although it does yield a border effect that is 40 percent larger, reverses the border's asymmetry, and indicates very different provincial effects.
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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in its series Working Papers with number
2000-024.
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Millimet, Daniel & Henderson, Daniel, 2006.
"Is Gravity Linear?,"
Departmental Working Papers
0517, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
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