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Gravity as both fact and theory is one of the great success stories of recent research on international trade, and has featured prominently in the policy debate over Brexit. We first review the facts, noting the overwhelming evidence that trade tends to fall with distance. We then introduce some expository tools for understanding constant-elasticity-of-substitution theories of gravity as a simple general-equilibrium system. Next, we point out some anomalies with the theory: mounting evidence against constant trade elasticities, and implausible predictions for bilateral trade balances. Finally, we sketch an approach based on subconvex gravity as a promising direction to resolving them.

We construct a growth model consistent with China's economic transition: high output growth, sustained returns on capital, reallocation within the manufacturing sector, and a large trade surplus. Entrepreneurial firms use more productive technologies, but due to financial imperfections they must finance investments through internal savings. State-owned firms have low productivity but survive because of better access to credit markets. High-productivity firms outgrow low-productivity firms if entrepreneurs have sufficiently high savings. The downsizing of financially integrated firms forces domestic savings to be invested abroad, generating a foreign surplus. A calibrated version of the theory accounts quantitatively for China's economic transition.

We develop a method for decomposing countries' observed export prices into quality versus quality-adjusted components using information contained in trade balances. Holding observed export prices constant, countries with trade surpluses are inferred to offer higher quality than countries running trade deficits. We account for variation in trade balances induced by horizontal and vertical differentiation, and we estimate the evolution of manufacturing quality for top exporters from 1989 to 2003. We find that observed unit value ratios can be a poor approximation for relative quality differences, countries' quality is converging more rapidly than their income, and countries appear to vary in terms of displaying \"high-quality\" versus \"low-price\" growth strategies.

Container ships travel between a fixed set of origins and destinations in round trips, inducing a negative correlation in their freight rates. I study the implications of this round trip effect on international trade and trade policy. I identify this effect and develop an instrument using it to estimate the impact of transport costs on trade. I simulate counterfactual import tariff increases in a quantitative model and quantify the importance of endogenizing transport costs with respect to this effect: an exogenous transport costs model predicts a trade balance improvement from protectionist policies, while the round trip model finds the opposite.

We use more than a century of Argentine and Mexican data to estimate the structural parameters of a small-open-economy real-business-cycle model driven by nonstationary productivity shocks. We find that the RBC model does a poor job of explaining business cycles in emerging countries. We then estimate an augmented model that incorporates shocks to the country premium and financial frictions. We find that the estimated financial-friction model provides a remarkably good account of business cycles in emerging markets and, importantly, assigns a negligible role to nonstationary productivity shocks. (JEL E13, E32, E44, F43, O11, O16)

Since introduction of cointegration and error-correction modeling, the definition of the J-curve has changed to reflect short-run deterioration combined with long-run improvement of the trade balance due to currency depreciation. Standard methods such as ARDL approach of Pesaran et al. (2001) assume that adjustment of variables follow a linear path. It is now recognized that the adjustment process could be nonlinear. Application of Non-linear ARDL approach of Shin et al. (2013) provides more evidence of the J-curve supporting non-linear adjustment of variables as well as asymmetric effects of exchange rate changes on the trade balance, using bilateral trade balance models of the U.S. with each of her six largest trading partners.

This study assesses the impact of energy resource depletion on the trade balance of 52 African countries from 1990 to 2023, considering key factors such as external debt, energy prices, and CO2 emissions. Employing a threshold regression model (PTR), the analysis distinguishes three regimes of energy depletion to examine how fossil fuel dependence affects economic sustainability. The results show that countries undergoing an energy transition experience a gradual improvement in their trade balance thanks to the integration of renewable energies, although debt and energy prices remain major obstacles. This study highlights the importance of sustainable energy policies to enhance long-term economic resilience in African countries.

This study examines the effect of oil shocks on Azerbaijan’s trade balance using a Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) model, drawing on monthly data from December 1994 to November 2024. The results indicate that the negative effects of oil production shocks on Azerbaijan’s trade balance exhibit considerable variation over time and that these adverse impacts become statistically significant in the post-COVID-19 period, indicating a heightened sensitivity of the trade balance to oil production fluctuations in the wake of the pandemic. Although the time-varying responses to oil price shocks are generally positive, they lose statistical significance during periods of sharp decline, suggesting a weakening of the transmission mechanism under extreme market conditions. The impact of exchange rate misalignment on the trade balance fluctuates, showing positive responses following major devaluation or policy changes. This study underscores the necessity of reducing dependence on oil exports and diversifying public revenues to lessen reliance on oil. These results provide important information for controlling external balances in nations that rely heavily on natural resources.

Purpose – Previous research that investigated the effects of currency depreciation on the trade balance assumed that the adjustment of all variables in a given model is in linear fashion. The authors wonder if introduction of nonlinearity in the adjustment of some variables such as the exchange rate can shed additional light on evidence of the J-curve. The new approach also allows to test whether exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects on the trade balance. Estimates of a trade balance model for Canada, China, Japan, and the USA reveal that the effects are indeed asymmetric. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on linear and nonlinear ARDL approach. Findings – When nonlinearity is introduced into testing approach for the J-curve, more evidence is found in support of the J-curve. Research limitations/implications – The models are estimated using aggregate trade flows of each country with the rest of the world, hence they suffer from aggregation bias. Using trade flows at bilateral level and at commodity level are highly recommended for future research. Originality/value – This is the first paper that applies nonlinear ARDL approach to test the short-run and long-run effects of currency depreciation on the trade balance.

The purpose of this work is to study the effects energy consumption, economic growth and trade balance in the East Asian countries. Using a panel data analysis in the period over 1996-2015, the study analyzes based on the methods of fixed, random effects, and pooled ordinary least squares. The data were collected from World Development Indicators, Department of Statistics in relevant countries used in the study. Our results demonstrate that energy consumption has negatively affected trade balance while economic growth that can negatively affect the balance of trade but insignificant. Further, the prime factors that can significantly impact trade balance are exports, exchange rates and development level. Both exports and exchange rates have positive and significant impacted on trade balance. Finally, a country with a higher level of domestic income will certainly perform a higher level of trade balance.