Gravity Model and Zipf's Law: An In-Depth Study into the Nature of International Trade

Authors

  • Mislav Josic Teaching and Research Assistant, Faculty of Economics and Business Zagreb, University of Zagreb, International Economics Department, Zagreb, Croatia
  • Marija Nikic Student Teaching Assistant, Faculty of Economics and Business Zagreb, University of Zagreb, International Economics Department, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

In this paper trade pattern based on distances between countries was tested through gravity model approach. This research highlights some of the regularities in international trade that arise and are in concordance with the rank-size rule. An empirical study was conducted on static data used in Croatia in 2012 in order to test the validity of Zipf's law. The presence of Zipf's law was empirically tested using population data for city proper and city settlements as well as the export values of Croatia's most important trading partners. In both cases results corroborate the existence of Zipf's law in population and export values. Due to the heavy tailness of Pareto distribution minor adjustments to the model have been made. Gravity model approach shows significant impact of distance and GDP on international trade. Dummy variable common border indicates that most of the trade in Croatia is done due to preferable geographical position of the country.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n9p583

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Published

29-09-2013

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 9 (2013): Special Issue - October 2013

Section

Research Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

 

How to Cite

Gravity Model and Zipf’s Law: An In-Depth Study into the Nature of International Trade. (2013). Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2(9), 583. https://www.richtmann.org/journal/index.php/ajis/article/view/892