IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-15-00116.html

A note on implementing gravity datasets with abundant zeros

Author

Listed:
  • Jordi Paniagua

    (Catholic University of Valencia)

Abstract

This note presents a procedure to construct lighter FDI gravity datasets. The standard estimates using all potential dyads and many zeros are inefficient and present convergence issues. The standard balanced approach overlooks the fact that FDI is highly unbalanced and numerous country pairs rarely show investment activity. An empirical application reveals that our method improves the quality of statistical estimation. Standard datasets underestimate the effect of firm selection and heterogeneity and overestimate the negative effect of distance. Our method to construct gravity datasets reduces the number of zeros and yields unbiased estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Jordi Paniagua, 2016. "A note on implementing gravity datasets with abundant zeros," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(1), pages 268-280.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-15-00116
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2016/Volume36/EB-16-V36-I1-P27.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baldwin, Richard & Taglioni, Daria, 2006. "Gravity for Dummies and Dummies for Gravity Equations," CEPR Discussion Papers 5850, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Elhanan Helpman, 2006. "Trade, FDI, and the Organization of Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 589-630, September.
    3. 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.
    4. Michael Tomz & Judith L. Goldstein & Douglas Rivers, 2007. "Do We Really Know That the WTO Increases Trade? Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 2005-2018, December.
    5. Elhanan Helpman & Marc Melitz & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 441-487.
    6. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2011. "poisson: Some convergence issues," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 11(2), pages 215-225, June.
    7. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan, 2014. "Is FDI doing good? A golden rule for FDI ethics," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(5), pages 807-812.
    8. 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.
    9. Elhanan Helpman & Marc J. Melitz & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2004. "Export Versus FDI with Heterogeneous Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 300-316, March.
    10. Jordi Paniagua & Juan Sapena, 2015. "Do credit constraints reduce foreign jobs? A note on foreign direct employment," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 195-198, February.
    11. 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.
    12. Choi, Chi-Young & Choi, Horag, 2014. "Does distance reflect more than transport costs?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 82-86.
    13. James E. Anderson, 2011. "The Gravity Model," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 133-160, September.
    14. 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.
    15. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry & Ries, John, 2010. "The erosion of colonial trade linkages after independence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 1-14, May.
    16. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2006. "The Log of Gravity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 641-658, November.
    17. Santos Silva, J.M.C. & Tenreyro, Silvana, 2010. "On the existence of the maximum likelihood estimates in Poisson regression," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 310-312, May.
    18. Ronald B. Davies & Helga Kristjánsdóttir, 2010. "Fixed Costs, Foreign Direct Investment, and Gravity with Zeros," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 47-62, February.
    19. 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. Federico Carril-Caccia & Juliette Milgram-Baleix & Jordi Paniagua, 2019. "Foreign Direct Investment in oil-abundant countries: The role of institutions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-23, April.
    2. Jordi Paniagua & Jesús Peiró-Palomino & Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, 2021. "Asylum Migration in OECD Countries: In Search of Lost Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 1109-1137, February.
    3. Andrew Myburgh & Jordi Paniagua, 2016. "Does International Commercial Arbitration Promote Foreign Direct Investment?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 597-627.
    4. Matteo Fiorini & Giorgia Giovannetti & Mauro Lanati & Filippo Santi, 2021. "Asymmetric cultural proximity and greenfield foreign direct investment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(9), pages 2572-2603, September.
    5. Cuadros, Ana & Martín-Montaner, Joan & Paniagua, Jordi, 2019. "Migration and FDI: The role of job skills," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 318-332.
    6. Jordi Paniagua & Cristina Villó & Maria Escrivà-Beltran, 2022. "Cross-Border Higher Education: The Expansion of International Branch Campuses," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 63(6), pages 1037-1057, September.
    7. Ana Cuadros & Antonio Navas & Jordi Paniagua, 2022. "Moving ideas across borders: Foreign inventors, patents and FDI," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(12), pages 3652-3678, December.

    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. Maria Teresa Costa-Campi & Jordi Paniagua & Elisa Trujillo-Baute, 2015. "Are energy market integrations a green light for FDI?," Working Papers 2015/18, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    2. 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.
    3. Andrew Myburgh & Jordi Paniagua, 2016. "Does International Commercial Arbitration Promote Foreign Direct Investment?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 597-627.
    4. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. (ed.), 0. "Research Handbook on Economic Diplomacy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 16053, June.
    6. Yoto V. Yotov, 2022. "On the role of domestic trade flows for estimating the gravity model of trade," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(3), pages 526-540, July.
    7. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Güzin Bayar, 2018. "Estimating export equations: a survey of the literature," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 629-672, March.
    9. Cuadros, Ana & Martín-Montaner, Joan & Paniagua, Jordi, 2016. "Homeward bound FDI: Are migrants a bridge over troubled finance?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 454-465.
    10. Gil-Pareja, Salvador & Llorca-Vivero, Rafael & Martínez-Serrano, José Antonio, 2014. "Do nonreciprocal preferential trade agreements increase beneficiaries' exports?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 291-304.
    11. Federico Carril-Caccia & Juliette Milgram-Baleix & Jordi Paniagua, 2019. "Foreign Direct Investment in oil-abundant countries: The role of institutions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-23, April.
    12. Marie M Stack & Rob Ackrill & Martin Bliss, 2019. "Sugar trade and the role of historical colonial linkages," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 46(1), pages 79-108.
    13. 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.
    14. Paniagua, Jordi & Sapena, Juan, 2014. "Is FDI doing good? A golden rule for FDI ethics," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(5), pages 807-812.
    15. Yoto V. Yotov, 2021. "The Variation of Gravity within Countries (or 15 Reasons Why Gravity Should Be Estimated with Domestic Trade Flows)," CESifo Working Paper Series 9057, CESifo.
    16. Paniagua, Jordi & Figueiredo, Erik & Sapena, Juan, 2015. "Quantile regression for the FDI gravity equation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1512-1518.
    17. Dennis Novy, 2013. "Gravity Redux: Measuring International Trade Costs With Panel Data," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 101-121, January.
    18. Thomas Orliac, 2012. "The economics of trade facilitation [L'économie de la facilitation des échanges]," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) tel-03681980, HAL.
    19. Chen, Natalie & Novy, Dennis, 2011. "Gravity, trade integration, and heterogeneity across industries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 206-221.
    20. Abueg, Luisito, 2018. "Survey of gravity models of trade and labour, and a proposed trade-employment gravity model for the Philippines," MPRA Paper 87256, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Scott L. Baier & Amanda Kerr & Yoto V. Yotov, 2018. "Gravity, distance, and international trade," Chapters, in: Bruce A. Blonigen & Wesley W. Wilson (ed.), Handbook of International Trade and Transportation, chapter 2, pages 15-78, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    22. Salvador Gil-Pareja & Rafael Llorca-Vivero & José Antonio Martínez-Serrano, 2016. "A Re-Examination of the Effect of GATT/WTO on Trade," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 561-584, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General
    • F2 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-15-00116. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.