ABSTRACT
A country’s visa policies are widely assumed to have economic consequences. In this short paper, I examine the effect of the ease with which a country’s citizens can enter foreign countries on international trade. Using a specification of the gravity model that avoids the endogeneity problems that typically arise when analyzing the association between ease of travel and the extent of bilateral interactions, I find that countries which issue powerful passports experience more international trade.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Bangwayo-Skeete and Skeete (Citation2017) take a different perspective. Aiming to identify determinants of a country’s visa policies, they find, for instance, that membership in the European Union is associated with more visa-free travel privileges.