Trade and Investment Division
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP)


 
The Gravity Model of International Trade:
A User Guide
(ST/ESCAP/2645)



         CONTENTS Page
 
Foreword
Executive Summary
iii
vii


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2.  






3.  




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5.  


Introduction

The Basis for the Gravity Model: From Intuition to Theory
2.1 The Gravity Intuition
2.2 Problems with the Intuitive Gravity Model
2.3 “Theoretical” Gravity Models
Appendix 2.1: Derivation of the Anderson and Van Wincoop (2003)
Gravity Model

Estimating the Gravity Model
3.1 Estimating the Intuitive Gravity Model
3.2 Estimating the Theoretical Gravity Model
3.3 Dealing with Endogeneity

Alternative Gravity Model Estimators
4.1 The Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood Estimator
4.2 The Heckman Sample Selection Estimator

Conclusion: Using the Gravity Model for Policy Research

References

Services dataset (.dta file for Stata)


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Last updated: 18 April 2013