What Explains the Volume and Composition of Trade?

This paper quantifies the importance of different determinants of trade at the industry level using a sample of 54 OECD and non-OECD economies. The empirical methodology extends the approach of previous empirical studies to explicitly quantify the impact that trading partners’ factor endowments and policies have on bilateral trade, and to analyse the effect of tariffs on the volume and composition of trade. We find that distance, common language, common border and regional trade agreements are important determinants of overall trade, and that factor endowments, policies and institutions, of both the exporter and its trading partners, are main determinants of what and where a country exports. By contrast, we find that trade policies based on tariffs on imported goods not only generate negative spillovers to trading partners by reducing their exports, but they are also likely to reduce exports of countries that impose the tariffs, in particular in industries that rely more on intermediate goods.