On the Conservation of Distance in International Trade

Berthelon, Matias ; Freund, Caroline

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGGREGATE TRADE;    AVERAGE TRADE;    BENCHMARK;    BILATERAL TRADE;    BILATERAL TRADE DATA;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-3293
RP-ID  :  WPS3293

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The volume of world trade has grown morethan twice as fast as real world income since 1980.Surprisingly, the effect of distance on trade has increasedduring this period. It could be that countries are tradinggreater volumes of goods that are highly sensitive todistance. An alternative explanation is that distance hasbecome more import for a significant share of goods. Usinghighly disaggregated bilateral trade data, the authors findthat adjustment in the composition of trade has notinfluenced the way in which distance affects trade. Incontrast, for about 25 percent of industries, distance hasbecome more important. This implies that the increaseddistance sensitivity of trade is a result of a change inrelative trade costs that affects many industries, asopposed to a shift to more distance-sensitive products. Theauthors also find that homogeneous products are twice aslikely to have become more distance sensitive as comparedwith differentiated goods. This is consistent with thehypothesis that falling search costs, resulting fromimprovements in transport and communications, are relativelymore important for differentiated goods. The results offerno evidence of the "death of distance." Rather,they suggest that distance-related relative trade costs haveremained unchanged or shifted in favor of proximate markets.