IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/887.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

South-North Trade in Ireland: Gravity and Firms from the Good Friday Agreement to Brexit

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Neary
  • Martina Lawless
  • Zuzanna Studnicka

Abstract

This paper revisits the work of Fitzsimons, Hogan, and Neary (1999) on the level of trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland. In doing so, we reflect on the recent move to prominence of this issue since the referendum decision of the UK to leave the EU and also on the shift within the economics literature to looking at trade issues from a micro rather than a macro perspective as data availability has grown. Our country-level results show the same pattern of limited statistical significance for a border effect as was found in the earlier work still holds but when using firm-level data we find a positive and significant border effect. This effect holds for total trade at firm and product level with the primary determinant coming from the intensive margin, both in terms of average exports per firm and average exports per product within firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Neary & Martina Lawless & Zuzanna Studnicka, 2019. "South-North Trade in Ireland: Gravity and Firms from the Good Friday Agreement to Brexit," Economics Series Working Papers 887, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:887
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5f70238e-fb62-423f-ad34-1ac990a0e252
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1707-1721, September.
    2. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2003. "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 170-192, March.
    3. Martina Lawless, 2010. "Deconstructing gravity: trade costs and extensive and intensive margins," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1149-1172, November.
    4. Matthieu Crozet & Pamina Koenig, 2010. "Structural gravity equations with intensive and extensive margins," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 41-62, February.
    5. Thierry Mayer & Gianmarco Ottaviano, 2008. "The Happy Few: The Internationalisation of European Firms," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 43(3), pages 135-148, May.
    6. Frances Ruane & Ali Ugur, 2005. "Labour Productivity and Foreign Direct Investment in Irish Manufacturing Industry - A Decomposition Analysis," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 36(1), pages 19-43.
    7. Emla Fitzsimons & Vincent (Vincent Peter) Hogan & J. Peter Neary, 1999. "Explaining the volume of north south trade : a gravity model approach," Open Access publications 10197/48, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    8. Bricongne, Jean-Charles & Fontagné, Lionel & Gaulier, Guillaume & Taglioni, Daria & Vicard, Vincent, 2012. "Firms and the global crisis: French exports in the turmoil," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 134-146.
    9. Matthieu Crozet & Pamina Koenig, 2010. "Structural gravity equations with intensive and extensive margins," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 43(1), pages 41-62, February.
    10. Bricongne, Jean-Charles & Fontagné, Lionel & Gaulier, Guillaume & Taglioni, Daria & Vicard, Vincent, 2012. "Firms and the global crisis: French exports in the turmoil," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 134-146.
    11. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    12. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6apm7lruv088iagm4rv2c33jtg is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Emla Fitzsimons & Vincent Hogan & J. Peter Neary, 1999. "Explaining the Volume of North-South Trade in Ireland - A Gravity Model Approach," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 30(4), pages 381-401.
    14. Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), 2014. "Handbook of International Economics," Handbook of International Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    15. McCallum, John, 1995. "National Borders Matter: Canada-U.S. Regional Trade Patterns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 615-623, June.
    16. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," Post-Print hal-03579844, HAL.
    17. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10147 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Anderson, James E, 1979. "A Theoretical Foundation for the Gravity Equation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 106-116, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cormac Ó Gráda & Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, 2022. "The Irish economy during the century after partition," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(2), pages 336-370, May.
    2. Fernihough, Alan, 2024. "Economic Geography and the Irish Border: A Market Access Approach," QBS Working Paper Series 2024/02, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's Business School.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Kareem, Fatima Olanike & Martinez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada & Brümmer, Bernhard, 2016. "Fitting the Gravity Model when Zero Trade Flows are Frequent: a Comparison of Estimation Techniques using Africa's Trade Data," GlobalFood Discussion Papers 230588, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.
    5. Yvonne Wolfmayr & Elisabeth Christen & Michael Pfaffermayr, 2013. "Pattern, Determinants and Dynamics of Austrian Service Exports – A Firmlevel Analysis," FIW Research Reports series IV-005, FIW.
    6. Chen, Natalie & Novy, Dennis, 2011. "Gravity, trade integration, and heterogeneity across industries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 206-221.
    7. Fontagné, Lionel & Orefice, Gianluca & Piermartini, Roberta & Rocha, Nadia, 2015. "Product standards and margins of trade: Firm-level evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 29-44.
    8. Anderson, James E. & Yotov, Yoto V., 2020. "Short run gravity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    9. Costinot, Arnaud & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2014. "Trade Theory with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 197-261, Elsevier.
    10. Gnidchenko, A., 2014. "Decomposing Export Growth into Extensive and Intensive Margins with the Emphasis on Comparative Advantages," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 24(4), pages 38-64.
    11. Balazs Murakozy & Gabor Bekes, 2009. "Temporary Trade," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0909, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    12. Békés, Gábor & Muraközy, Balázs, 2012. "Temporary trade and heterogeneous firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 232-246.
    13. Antoine Berthou & Lionel Fontagné, 2016. "Variable Trade Costs, Composition Effects and the Intensive Margin of Trade," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 54-71, January.
    14. Lionel Fontagné & Gianluca Orefice & Roberta Piermartini & Nadia Rocha, 2015. "Product Standards and Margins of Trade: Firm-Level Evidence Product Standards and Margins of Trade: Firm-Level Evidence," Post-Print hal-01299757, HAL.
    15. Helble, Matthias, 2014. "The Pacific's Connectivity and Its Trade Implications," ADBI Working Papers 499, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    16. Chiappini, Raphaël & Jégourel, Yves, 2021. "“The buck stops with the executives”: Assessing the impact of workforce composition and cultural distance on French firms’ exports," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 45-57.
    17. Mahdi Ghodsi, 2020. "Is Austria’s economy locked-in in the CESEE region? Austria’s competitiveness at the micro-level," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 669-693, August.
    18. Rudy Douven & Remco Mocking & Ilaria Mosca, 2012. "The Effect of Physician Fees and Density Differences on Regional Variation in Hospital Treatments," CPB Discussion Paper 208.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    19. Arjan Lejour, 2008. "The Principle of Subsidiarity and Innovation Support Measures," CPB Memorandum 208.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    20. Roger Smeets & Harold Creusen & Arjan Lejour & Henk Kox, 2010. "Export margins and export barriers: uncovering market entry costs of exporters in the Netherlands," CPB Document 208.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    21. Markus Brueckner & Ngo Van Long & Joaquin L. Vespignani, 2020. "Non-Gravity Trade," Globalization Institute Working Papers 388, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    22. Gregory Corcos & Massimo Del Gatto & Giordano Mion & Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, 2012. "Productivity and Firm Selection: Quantifying the ‘New’ Gains from Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(561), pages 754-798, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Brexit; Gravity; Multi-Product Firms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:887. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.