Brazilian international and inter-state trade flows: an exploratory analysis using the gravity model

Recent efforts toward a world with freer trade, like WTO/GATT or regional Preferential Trade Agreements(PTAs), were put in doubt after McCallum's(1995) finding of a large border effect between US and Canadian provinces. Since then, there has been a great amount of research on this topic employing the gravity equation. This dissertation has two goals. The first goal is to review comprehensively the recent literature about the gravity equation, including its usages, econometric specifications, and the efforts to provide it with microeconomic foundations. The second goal is the estimation of the Brazilian border effect (or 'home-bias trade puzzle') using inter-state and international trade flow data. It is used a pooled cross-section Tobit model. The lowest border effect estimated was 15, which implies that Brazilian states trade among themselves 15 times more than they trade with foreign countries. Further research using industry disaggregated data is needed to qualify the estimated border effect with respect to which part of that effect can be attributed to actual trade costs and which part is the outcome of the endogenous location problem of the firm.

New challenges for international economic law teaching and research in México: Mexico’s outstanding waves of reforms

This position paper argues that at this time of Mexico’s ongoing big transformation, legal educators and researchers in Mexico need to pay greater attention to international economic law, and that a renewal and perhaps some re-orientation of the approach to teaching international economic law, could provide significant contributions to and shape and support both the objectives and outcomes of reform in Mexico. International Economic Law courses and research can be made more useful, not only for students themselves, but also for their contribution towards the role that academics, lawyers, and other epistemic communities need to play in the political, economic and social evolution that is accelerating in Mexico.