The importance of business travel for trade: Evidence from the liberalization of the Soviet airspace

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Soderlund, Bengt
• 署名单位: Lund University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2023.103812
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: Trade costs; Air travel; Face-to-face communication

摘要

The strong negative relationship between geographical distance and trade is not well under-stood. I use the liberalization of the Soviet airspace to estimate the causal impact of business travel cost on trade. The liberalization radically reduced travel time between Europe and East Asia and was followed by a significant increase in trade. I find that the cost of business travel can account for a large share of the trade frictions that cause trade to sharply decline with dis-tance. A plausible explanation for these results is that face-to-face interaction through business travel is important for trade. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).