Fly and Trade: Evidence from Italian Manufacturing Industry by Marco Alderighi and Alberto Gaggero

ABSTRACT
This paper offers an empirical investigation on the relation between air transport service and trade, using a panel of 20 Italian regions and £4 European countries observed, half-yearly, over the period 1998-2010.
We apply a Newey-West two-step GMM estimator to produce estimates which are robust to the presence of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation.
Our findings suggest that air transport service positively affects the export of Italian manufacturers and that full-service carriers are mainly responsible for this result.

MARCO ALDERIGHI is full Professor of Applied Economics, Department of Economics e Political Science, Università della Valle d’Aosta, and CERTeT, Bocconi University, Milan.
m.alderighi@univda.it
ALBERTO GAGGERO is Senior Lecturer of Economics Department of Economics and Management, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Pavia. alberto.gaggero@unipv.it