The Institutional Determinants of Bilateral Trade Patterns

Spanish empires only. We also included the colonizers themselves into the respective
empires, contrary to the original source. In this way, the figures identify shared colonial
relations for pairs of countries.

Overview of the variables and their abbreviations

This overview provides a concise summary of all variables used in the analysis, from the
dependent variable to the explanatory variables, both country-specific and bilateral. It also
presents the abbreviations used in the data set.

Bilateral Trade Flows in 000 dollars for 1998 (WITS)

Information on gross domestic product [WDI]

Gdp: GDP in 1998 (current dollars)

Institutional proxies for governance [GOV]

Voice&Acc.(VA):   Voice and Accountability

Pol. Stab.(PS):       Political Stability

Gov. Eff.(GE):      Government Effectiveness

Reg. Qual.(RQ):    Regulatory Quality

Rule of Law (RL):  Rule of Law

Contr. of Corr.(CC): Control of Corruption

Bilateral variables

• distance: distance from home to foreign ‘as the bird flies’, based on centres of gravity

• comm_border: dummy variable indicating whether a pair of countries shares a
common border

• comm_lang: dummy variable indicating whether a pair of countries shares the same
primary language

• comm_colony: captures whether a pair of countries has a common colonial history.
For this, we consider the British, French and Spanish colonial empires.

Bilateral Trade Flows and Institutions

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