Intra-national versus international trade in the European Union: why do national borders matter?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chen, N
• 署名单位: University of London; London Business School; Universite Libre de Bruxelles; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/S0022-1996(03)00042-4
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 93-118
• 关键词: border effects; TRADE; EU countries; industries; gravity equation

摘要

The first objective of this paper is to estimate border effects among European Union countries. In this context, the specification of the gravity equation, together with the choice of the distance measure, are shown to be crucial for assessing the size of the border effect. The second objective is to evaluate the determinants of the cross-commodity variation in national border effects. Contrary to previous findings reported in the literature, we show that trade barriers do provide an explanation. In particular, technical barriers to trade, together with product-specific information costs, increase border effects, whereas non-tariff barriers are not significant. Our results further suggest that these barriers are not the only cause since the spatial clustering of firms is also found to matter. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.