Determinants of Bilateral Trade: Does Gravity Work in a Neoclassical World?

AbstractThis paper derives equations for the value of bilateral trade from two extreme cases of the Heckscher-Ohlin Model, both of which could also represent a variety of other models as well. The first case is frictionless trade, in which the absence of all impediments to trade in homogeneous products causes producers and consumers to be indifferent among trading partners. Resolving this indifference randomly, expected trade flows correspond exactly to the simple frictionless gravity equation if preferences are identical and homothetic or if demands are uncorrelated with supplies, and they depart from that equation systematically when there are such correlations. The second case is of countries that each…