While the gravity model has been one of the most successful applications in empirical trade, various attempts are still made to improve its regression results. One of the recent developments in the econometric technique is to extend the gravity model to a panel data framework and take into consideration the existence of dynamic effects. In this paper, we apply these new techniques to examine th...

China’s trade with Africa has increased significantly in the past two decades. The effects of these growing trade volumes (and financial flows) are quite contested. The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of growing Chinese influence in Africa on the intra-regional trade in the continent. This paper estimates a traditional gravity model using Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood estimati...

When data are poor, we resort to theory modeling. This is a two-step process. We have first to identify the appropriate type of model for the system under consideration and then to tailor it to the specifics of the case. To understand settlement formation, which is the concern of this article, this involves choosing not only input parameter values such as site separations but also input functio...

EU enlargement revives the debate around the participation to the EMU. We use a gravity model to see whether informal barriers have changed over a ten-year period covering the creation of the EMU, and whether their impact on European member countries’ agricultural and food trade has been modified. We find that it has led to lower information costs. We observe a diminishing marginal trade impact...

Using bilateral data on remittance flows to Pakistan for 23 major host countries, in the first study of its kind, the authors examine the effect of transaction costs on foreign remittances. They find that the effect of transaction costs on remittance flows is negative and significant; suggesting that a high cost will either refrain migrant’s from sending money back home or make them remit throu...

Until now, the value of inter-country trade within South Asian nations has been low. While similarities in the exports profiles can be seen as a reason for this low value of trade, it might not be a valid one, especially given the presence of growing South Asian income. The intraindustry trade theory suggests that complementarity might actually increase trade in the presence of a rising income....

Regional Trade Agreements such as ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) are expected to increase the trade flows among member countries through trade creation and trade diversion. This paper employs the gravity model using manufacturing trade data to analyse this hypothesised effect in a time-varying context. The estimation results suggest that AFTA has expanded the trade substantially. The trade creati...

We study symmetric teleparallel (STP) gravity model, in which only spacetime nonmetricity is nonzero. First we obtain STP equivalent Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian and give an approach for a generic solution in terms of only metric tensor. Then we obtain a spherically symmetric static solution to the Einstein’s equation in STP space-time and discuss the singularities. Finally, we study a model giv...

We study a gravity model where a tensionful codimension-one threebrane is embedded in a bulk with infinite transverse length. We find that 4D gravity is induced on the brane already at the classical level if we include higher-curvature (Gauss-Bonnet) terms in the bulk. Consistency conditions appear to require a negative brane tension as well as a negative coupling for the higher-curvature terms.

The impact of the latest combined CHAMP/GRACE/terrestrial measurements Earth gravity model EIGEN-CG03C on the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect with some linear combinations of the nodes of some of the existing Earth’s artificial satellites is presented. The 1-sigma upper bound of the systematic error in the nodenode LAGEOS-LAGEOS II combination is 3.9% (4% with EIGENGRACE02S, ∼ 6% with ...