Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crs/wpaper/2018-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Somatic Distance, Cultural Affinities, Trust And Trade

Author

Listed:
  • Jacques Melitz

    (CREST; ENSAE; CEPII)

  • Farid Toubal

    (CREST; ENS de Paris-Saclay; CEPII)

Abstract
Somatic distance, or differences in physical appearance, proves to be extremely important in the gravity model of bilateral trade in conformity with results in other areas of economics and outside of it in the social sciences. This is also true quite independently of survey evidence about bilateral trust. These findings are obtained in a sample of the 15 members of the European Economic Association in 1996. Robustness tests also show that somatic distance has a more reliable influence on bilateral trade than the other cultural variables. The article finally discusses the interpretation and the breadth of application of these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacques Melitz & Farid Toubal, 2018. "Somatic Distance, Cultural Affinities, Trust And Trade," Working Papers 2018-05, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:crs:wpaper:2018-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crest.science/RePEc/wpstorage/2018-05.pdf
    File Function: CREST working paper version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melitz, Jacques & Toubal, Farid, 2014. "Native language, spoken language, translation and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 351-363.
    2. Kevin Lang & Jee-Yeon K. Lehmann, 2012. "Racial Discrimination in the Labor Market: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 959-1006, December.
    3. Anthony Edo & Nicolas Jacquemet & Constantine Yannelis, 2019. "Language skills and homophilous hiring discrimination: Evidence from gender and racially differentiated applications," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 349-376, March.
    4. Yu, Shu & Beugelsdijk, Sjoerd & de Haan, Jakob, 2015. "Trade, trust and the rule of law," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 102-115.
    5. Thierry Mayer & Keith Head, 2002. "Illusory Border Effects: Distance Mismeasurement Inflates Estimates of Home Bias in Trade," Working Papers 2002-01, CEPII research center.
    6. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2009. "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1095-1131.
    7. Ernst Fehr, 2009. "On The Economics and Biology of Trust," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 235-266, 04-05.
    8. Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel & Bradley, Jake & Tarasonis, Linas, 2018. "Racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market: Employment and wage differentials by skill," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 45-66.
    9. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    10. Eva Spring & Volker Grossmann, 2016. "Does bilateral trust across countries really affect international trade and factor mobility?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 103-136, February.
    11. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    12. Andrew K. Rose, 2000. "One money, one market: the effect of common currencies on trade," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 15(30), pages 08-45.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matteo Fiorini & Giorgia Giovannetti & Mauro Lanati & Filippo Santi, 2021. "Asymmetric cultural proximity and greenfield foreign direct investment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(9), pages 2572-2603, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jacques Melitz & Farid Toubal, 2019. "Somatic distance, trust and trade," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 786-802, August.
    2. Olivier BARGAIN & Jean-Marie CARDEBAT & Raphaël CHIAPPINI, 2020. "Trade Uncorked: Genetic Resistance and Quality Heterogeneity in Wine Exports," Bordeaux Economics Working Papers 2020-18, Bordeaux School of Economics (BSE).
    3. Sekou Keita & Jérôme Valette, 2019. "Natives’ Attitudes and Immigrants’ Unemployment Durations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(3), pages 1023-1050, June.
    4. Lippens, Louis & Dalle, Axana & D'hondt, Fanny & Verhaeghe, Pieter-Paul & Baert, Stijn, 2023. "Understanding ethnic hiring discrimination: A contextual analysis of experimental evidence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    5. Eva Spring & Volker Grossmann, 2016. "Does bilateral trust across countries really affect international trade and factor mobility?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 103-136, February.
    6. Hannah Van Borm & Louis Lippens & Stijn Baert, 2022. "An Arab, an Asian, and a Black guy walk into a job interview: ethnic stigma in hiring after controlling for social class," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 22/1054, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    7. Anthony Edo & Nicolas Jacquemet & Constantine Yannelis, 2019. "Language skills and homophilous hiring discrimination: Evidence from gender and racially differentiated applications," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 349-376, March.
    8. Bryson, Alex & Chevalier, Arnaud, 2015. "Is there a taste for racial discrimination amongst employers?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 51-63.
    9. Jacquemet, Nicolas & Yannelis, Constantine, 2012. "Indiscriminate discrimination: A correspondence test for ethnic homophily in the Chicago labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 824-832.
    10. Siddique, Abu & Vlassopoulos, Michael & Zenou, Yves, 2023. "Market competition and discrimination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    11. Raymond Fisman & Daniel Paravisini & Vikrant Vig, 2017. "Cultural Proximity and Loan Outcomes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 457-492, February.
    12. Cordoba, Juan C. & Isojärvi, Anni & Li, Haoran, 2020. "Equilibrium Unemployment: The Role Of Discrimination," ISU General Staff Papers 202011140800001116, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    13. Borowczyk-Martins, Daniel & Bradley, Jake & Tarasonis, Linas, 2018. "Racial discrimination in the U.S. labor market: Employment and wage differentials by skill," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 45-66.
    14. Anderson, James E. & Borchert, Ingo & Mattoo, Aaditya & Yotov, Yoto V., 2018. "Dark costs, missing data: Shedding some light on services trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 193-214.
    15. Laouénan, Morgane & Rathelot, Roland, 2017. "Ethnic Discrimination on an Online Marketplace of Vacation Rental," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 318, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    16. Bruno Decreuse & Linas Tarasonis, 2021. "Statistical Discrimination in a Search Equilibrium Model: Racial Wage and Employment Disparities in the US," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 143, pages 105-136.
    17. Maitreyi Bordia Das, 2016. "All in my Head? The Play of Exclusion and Discrimination in the Labor Market," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(02), pages 1-20, June.
    18. Richard Chisik, 2015. "Job market signalling, stereotype threat and counter‐stereotypical behaviour," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(1), pages 155-188, February.
    19. Melitz, Jacques & Toubal, Farid, 2014. "Native language, spoken language, translation and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 351-363.
    20. Andreas Ferrara & Price Fishback, 2024. "Discrimination, Migration, and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from World War I," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(5), pages 1201-1219, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Somatic distance; Cultural interactions; Trust; Language; Bilateral Trade;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F40 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - General
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crs:wpaper:2018-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Secretariat General (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crestfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.