infonet-economy

This paper uses a gravity model to assess ex-post regional trade agreements. The model includes 130 countries and is estimated with panel data over the period 1962–1996. The introduction of the correct number of dummy variables allows for identification of Vinerian trade creation and trade diversion effects, while the estimation method takes into account the unobservable...

We argue that the lack of large cross-cultural differences in many games with student subjects from developed countries may be due to the games studied. These games tap primarily basic psychological reactions, like fairness, and reciprocity. Once we look at norm-enforcement, in particular punishment, we find large differences even among culturally rather homogeneous student groups...

Over the last twenty years, many researchers have attempted to explain the determinants of wage inequality. I propose a flexible, intuitive and semiparametric estimator of distribution functions in the presence of covariates. The conditional wage distribution is estimated by quantile regressions. Then, the conditional distribution is integrated over the range of the covariates to...

The effective market access granted to textiles and apparel under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is estimated, taking into account the presence of rules of origin. First, estimates are provided of the effect of tariff preferences combined with rules of origin on the border prices of Mexican final goods exported to the United States and of U.S. intermediate goods...

This paper reports panel gravity estimates of aggregate bilateral trade for 130 countries over the period 1962-96 in which the coefficient of distance is allowed to change over time. In a standard specification in which transport costs are proxied by distance only, it is found paradoxically that the absolute value of the elasticity of bilateral trade to distance has been...

This paper estimates the effective market-access granted under NAFTA in textiles and apparel by combining two approaches. First, we estimate the effect of tariff preferences and rules of origin on the border prices of Mexican final goods exported to the US and of US intermediates exported to Mexico. We find that one third of the estimated rise in the border price of Mexican apparel...

Administrative data of the unemployment insurance system in Switzerland have been made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (seco) for specific research purposes. They contain rich information about unemployed and job seekers. The records are linked to social security data. The combination of the two sources leads to a very rich database. This paper describes...