Theoretical foundations for estimating gravity equations were enhanced recently in Anderson and van Wincoop (2003). Though elegant, the model assumes symmetric bilateral trade costs to generate an estimable set of structural equations. In reality, however, trade costs (and trade flows) are not bilaterally symmetric. To allow for asymmetric bilateral trade costs, we provide an alternative framew...

Conflict is a costly endeavor. However, conflict itself of unobservable magnitude which makes statistical inference problematic. The long-run economic cost calculated as the sum contemporaneous costs and discounted value future costs. Typically, researchers use War or Militarized Interstate Conflicts independent, discrete events to calculate its effect then introduce time binary variable estima...