Multilevel Modelling of Bilateral Trade Flows between European Union Countries
Multilevel Modelling of Bilateral Trade Flows between European Union Countries

Summary/Abstract: Empirical research of international trade with the use of gravity model is often estimated with the FE estimator. Indeed, this method is appropriate in the face of heterogeneity, that is typical of pairs of countries, which influence the effect of the determinants of bilateral trade. However, the disadvantage of the FE approach is that it assumes all the slopes of the variables of interest are common across all trading pairs in the sample. The use of mixed effects model in this study allows the coefficients of national incomes’ product and the common internetization rate of trading countries to vary across the pairs. In order to capture unspecified heterogeneity by allowing the intercept and slopes to have a stochastic component in their variation, the 2-level and 3-level hierarchical linear models are estimated based on the data from the period 1999–2011. The results indicate that not only typical gravity model factors, but also globalization factors as internetization rate, researchers rate, share of high-technology products’ export, energy use, foreign languages proficiency and monetary union influence the bilateral trade between EU-members.

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