Towards a social dialectometry: the analysis of internal border effects

A gravity-model approach is used to estimate the magnitude of the internal border (home bias) and external border (frontier) effects in Spain using industry-level trade flows. We find that the average border effects are about 30 and 10, respectively. Next we explore the variation in the industry-specific border effects. First, the border effects are larger in highly product differentiated industries. Second, the internal border effect is twice bigger for trade in intermediate goods than for trade in final goods. Third, conditioning on the geographic concentration of firms reduces significantly the internal border effect.

Many studies have found that international borders represent large barriers to trade. But how do international borders compare to domestic border barriers? We investigate international and domestic border barriers in a unified framework. We consider a unique data set of exports from individual U.S. states to foreign countries and combine it with trade flows within and between U.S. states. After controlling for distance and country size, we find that relative to state-to-state trade, crossing an individual U.S. state’s domestic border entails a larger trade barrier than crossing the international U.S. border. This finding highlights the concentration of trade flows at the local level and the importance of factors such as informational barriers and transportation costs even for the relatively short distances associated with state-to-state trade.

Many studies have found that international borders represent large barriers to trade. But how do international borders compare to domestic border barriers? We investigate international and domestic border barriers in a unified framework. We consider a unique data set of exports from individual U.S. states to foreign countries and combine it with trade flows within and between U.S. states. After controlling for distance and country size, we find that relative to state-to-state trade, crossing an individual U.S. state's domestic border entails a larger trade barrier than crossing the international U.S. border. This finding highlights the concentration of trade flows at the local level and the importance of factors such as informational barriers and transportation costs even for the relatively short distances associated with state-to-state trade.

Many studies have found that international borders represent large barriers to trade. But how do international borders compare to domestic border barriers? We investigate international and domestic border barriers in a unified framework. We consider a data set of exports from individual US states to foreign countries and combine it with trade flows between and within US states. After controlling for distance and country size, we estimate that relative to state-to-state trade, crossing an individual US state’s domestic border appears to entail a larger trade barrier than crossing the international US border. Due to the absence of governmental impediments to trade within the United States, this result is surprising. We interpret it as highlighting the concentration of economic activity and trade flows at the local level. (JEL codes: F10, F15)

ABSTRACTThe borders of the EU are open for the movement of resources but still there can be some strong negative effects of international borders on productivity and knowledge spillovers compared to the internal regional borders. These negative effects could be due to language barriers, cultural differences, local rules and regulation, legal issues, property rights, etc. These effects of international borders have an economic significance that need to be controlled when analyzing the regional knowledge spillovers. This aspect related to international borders has not been fully taken into account in the existing literature related to knowledge spillovers, therefore, ignoring this effect might under- or overestimate the effect of knowledge and technology spillovers. The results show that technology and knowledge spillovers are mainly coming from internal neighbor regions only, whereas spillovers across the international borders are statistically insignificant. Moreover, the results show that not properly incorporating border effects will lead to inaccurate estimates of the spillovers.

Determinants of price transmission

Following the realization that the north-western dialect continuum of Catalan is splitting along the political border between Catalonia and Aragon, in Spain, this article upholds the view that internal borders should be incorporated into border studies, since they often trigger processes of linguistic convergence and divergence which alter the most common patterns of linguistic diffusion. The language change is analysed in apparent time using a combination of dialectometric techniques that constitute an innovation within the field of border effects, and which, in the specific case of Catalan in Aragon, illustrates the usefulness of dialectometry in detecting processes of structural hybridization in areas where the vitality of the language is most seriously undermined. Lastly, this article evinces the need to further develop a form of social dialectometry that not only answers sociolinguistic questions, but also makes it possible to objectively evaluate the social motivations fuelling the ongoing changes.

This paper analyses the effect of international borders and of trade agreements at international borders on subnational (i.e. regional) growth. We construct an extensive panel dataset covering 1,350 regions in 86 countries worldwide between 1950 and 2017. Our results show that international borders decrease regional income per capita, while trade agreements at international borders increase regional income per capita by about the same magnitude. The positive marginal effect of trade agreements on regional income corresponds to at least three fifths of the negative marginal effect of international borders. Thus, trade agreements can compensate negative border effects and explain regional inequalities within countries. An array of robustness tests supports our interpretations.

The major role of toxicology societies in global collaborations – a call to action

Cross-border trade in food commodities within sub-regional economic blocks in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) is believed to be faster, cheaper, more convenient and welfare-enhancing than overseas trade between SSA countries and the USA, EU or the BRIC countries. The difficulty of commodity arbitrage across international borders in SSA is however a fundamental constraint to price transmission, market integration and realization of the welfare-enhancing role of cross-border trade in Africa. This study examines the impact of border and distance on price transmission between tomato markets in Ghana and Burkina-Faso. The analysis applies a regime-switching vector error correction model to estimate semi-weekly, wholesale prices of tomato in four tomato markets in Ghana and a production centre in Burkina-Faso. Estimated parameters of price transmission contain evidence of border and distance effects. This is expected since high transfer costs, including cross-border tariffs are incurred by traders in moving tomato across the border. Moreover, the perishable nature of tomato, and the poor quality of roads and transportation facilities may imply additional costs of risks to arbitrageurs. The findings have both theoretical relevance and practical implications for facilitating cross-border trade in West Africa, especially for trade between landlocked countries like Burkina-Faso and coastal ones like Ghana.

Prey individuals must constantly make decisions regarding safety and resource acquisition to ensure that they acquire enough resources without being predated upon. These decisions result in a trade-off between resource acquisition behaviours (such as foraging and drinking) and safety behaviours (such as grouping and vigilance). This trade-off is likely to be affected by the social and environmental factors that an individual experiences, including the individual’s location in the landscape. The overall objective of my PhD was to understand the decisions a migratory ungulate makes in order to acquire enough resources, while not becoming prey, and to understand how these decisions are influenced by social and environmental factors. In order to do this, I studied the behaviour of blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) in Etosha National Park, Namibia, between 2013 and 2015. I studied wildebeests’ behaviour while they acquired food and water and moved within the landscape. Along with observational studies, I also used lion (Panthera leo) roar playbacks to experimentally manipulate perceived predator presence to test wildebeests’ responses to immediate predation risk. For Chapter 2 I studied the foraging-vigilance trade-off of wildebeest to determine how social and environmental factors, including the location within the landscape, were correlated with wildebeests’ time spent foraging and vigilant as well as their bite rate. I found that environmental variables were more important than social variables in predicting the foraging-vigilance trade-off of adult wildebeest. Food availability was the most important factor, with wildebeest increasing time spent foraging, at a cost to vigilance time, when food was more readily available. This result suggests that wildebeests’ behavioural decisions were more affected by forage availability than predation risk. The objective of Chapter 3 was to study the effects of individual characteristics, social variables and environmental variables on wildebeests’ behaviour during their approach to, time at, and retreat from, waterholes, to understand the water acquisition-safety trade-off. I looked at time spent vigilant, moving and drinking as well as step rate. Wildebeests’ behaviour was associated with individual, social and environmental factors. Wildebeest approached with less caution when in larger groups and when more heterospecifics and non-focal group wildebeest were present. Wildebeest spent more time during the at-water and retreat phases vigilant in 2013 than in 2014 and spent more time during the at-water phase vigilant earlier in the year. These results suggest that prey species may consider different factors when deciding how cautiously they should approach waterholes, how vigilant they should be at waterholes, and how quickly they should retreat from waterholes. For Chapter 4 I used lion roar playbacks to test the effects of immediate predation risk on the foraging-safety trade-off of wildebeest. I assessed the changes in times spent vigilant and foraging as well as the change in within-group density after wildebeest heard lion roars. I also looked at vigilance strategy by analysing the change in the type (social and antipredator) and intensity (exclusive and chewing) of vigilance used. After hearing lion roars, time spent vigilant (including excusive and antipredator vigilance) and within-group density increased, while time spent foraging decreased. The foraging-vigilance trade-off was not affected by any variable except playback type (lion or control). These findings suggest that wildebeests’ reactions to predator presence were not affected by the social or environmental variables that affected their feeding-safety trade-off when they are not under immediate predation risk. The objective of my final data chapter (Chapter 5) was to assess what factors affected wildebeests’ landscape use and to determine whether they altered their within-group density in response to social or environmental factors, including location within the landscape. The results suggest that when choosing their location in the landscape, wildebeest considered both landscape-scale predation risk factors (the landscape of fear) and forage competition factors. Wildebeests’ within-group density was associated with forage competition more than the landscape of fear. These findings suggest that wildebeests’ landscape-use and within-group density were altered in response to predator avoidance and resource acquisition. My thesis provides insights into how prey species trade-off between resource acquisition and safety. By assessing the social, environmental and landscape variables that affect the trade-off, this study showed that prey adapt their behaviour according to group dynamics, forage availability and predation risk and suggests that individuals may consider different aspects of their environmental and social surroundings when accessing different resources. Therefore, future studies should examine social, environmental and landscape variables together, rather than only considering a subset of these variables. My thesis also showed that different intensities and types of vigilance are used under different circumstances, suggesting the importance of considering both vigilance type and intensity in future studies to fully understand the behaviour and potential cost.

This article examines how the institutional design of borders affects international trade. The authors explore variation in the effects of borders by comparing new international borders that follow precedent and thus have a prior institutional history with new international borders that lack such an institutional history. The former minimally disrupt—or restore—previous economic networks, while the latter fundamentally disrupt existing economic networks. A variety of empirical tests show that, consistent with this institutional perspective on borders, new international boundaries that follow precedent are associated with significantly faster recovery and greater increase in subsequent trade flows. By contrast, when new international borders are truly new, they disrupt local economic networks, introduce new transaction costs, and impose higher adjustment costs on states, which the authors show to have long-term deleterious effects on trade.

A National Park split by an internal border. Analysing the case of Sierra de Guadarrama (Spain)

Editor's evaluation: Competitive interactions between culturable bacteria are highly non-additive

Decision letter: Competitive interactions between culturable bacteria are highly non-additive