Institutional Quality and Bilateral Trade: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Gravity Model

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiankun Li
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1504409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Saqib Irshad ◽  
Qi Xin ◽  
Zhang Hui ◽  
Hamza Arshad ◽  
Duncan Watson

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atif Awad ◽  
Ishak Yussof

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extend the gravity model to examine the role of infrastructure (including human capital (HC)), macroeconomic policies, the institutional quality and the colonial regimes on intra-African trade during the period 1990-2013. The results show that the basic gravity variables have substantial influence on the bilateral trade in the continent. Most interestingly, whilst internal conflicts appear to have harmful and significant impacts on the flow of such trade, HC, the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the British colonial regime appear as encouraging factors. The results of the study imply that devoting more resources to HC and creating a favourable investment environment should come as a top priority in current efforts to facilitate Africa’s economic regionalism. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs Tobit technique on a semi-log extended form for the gravity model. Findings The results show that the basic gravity variables have substantial influence on the bilateral trade in the continent. Most interestingly, whilst internal conflicts appear to have harmful and significant impacts on the flow of such trade; HC, the flow of FDI and the British colonial regime come out as encouraging factors. Originality/value The results provided can be useful to design policies oriented to facilities intra-trade between African economies. So far, this is the first study that incorporates the soft type of infrastructures, colonization and institutional quality in the investigation of the factors that can influence intra-Africa trade.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097508782098717
Author(s):  
Hammed Agboola Yusuf ◽  
Luqman Olanrewaju Afolabi ◽  
Waliu Olawale Shittu ◽  
Kafilah Lola Gold ◽  
Murtala Muhammad

This article examines the impact of institutional quality on bilateral trade flow between Malaysia and selected 25 African Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries. Four institutional qualities were selected from World Governance Indicators with other trade predictors from the period from 1985 to 2016. Using gravity model of trade and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimation method (PPML) technique, the results confirm that government effectiveness, regulatory quality and political stability have an adverse effect on bilateral trade flow among the OIC countries in Africa. On the other hand, these institutional quality variables were considered as a strength for Malaysian economic growth. Therefore, better institutional quality reforms are needed among OIC member countries in Africa in order to accelerate trade, economic growth and development in their region.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Cristina Di Stefano ◽  
P. Lelio Iapadre ◽  
Ilaria Salvati

This paper aims at investigating whether and how the intensity of trade between a pair of countries changes when they experience improvements in their infrastructural systems. We carry out our analysis considering countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a project specifically designed to promote infrastructural connectivity and therefore boost trade among the countries involved. Our empirical strategy relies on a particular specification of the gravity model, in which the dependent variable consists in an index of revealed trade preferences, calculated by comparing the actual value of trade flows between two countries with their expected value, proportional to the two countries’ total trade. Such methodology allows us to estimate bilateral trade intensity without resorting to the traditional “size” variables of the gravity model, taking the entire network of multilateral trade into account. We then study the possible impact of an improvement in infrastructure on a ‘gravity-adjusted’ measure of trade preferences, given by the residuals of our first estimations. Our results indicate that bilateral preferences among BRI countries will intensify inasmuch as they succeed in coordinating their infrastructural projects.


2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masoud Moghaddam ◽  
Jie Duan

The US trade deficit with China has existed for a long time, and its dollar value has been on the rise recently. It is widely believed that the main culprit is the manipulated value of Renminbi relative to the US dollar. Towards that end, this article re-examines the spot exchange rate and bilateral trade nexus using the Fourier approximation and a variant of the well-known gravity model during the sample period 1993: q1–2014: q1. Although China’s exports to the US Granger cause the exchange rate in a co-integrated space, the findings of a vector error correction model indicate that there is not a strong relation between the two. Indeed, within the aforementioned sample, only 15.52 per cent of changes in China’s exports to the USA are attributable to changes in the spot exchange rate. This is noticeably much smaller than impacts of the other variables utilized in the estimated gravity model. As such, the palpable trade imbalance between the USA and China cannot be single-handedly blamed on the spot exchange rate manipulations.


Author(s):  
Christopher S Magee

Abstract This paper provides one of the first assessments of the hypothesis that two countries are more likely to form a preferential trade agreement (PTA) if they are already major trading partners. The paper also tests a number of predictions from the political economy literature about which countries are expected to form regional agreements. The results show that countries are more likely to be preferential trading partners if they have significant bilateral trade, are similar in size, and are both democracies. Finally, the paper measures the effect of preferential agreements on trade volumes while, unlike previous studies, treating PTA formation as endogenous.


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