On 5 June 2017, an airspace blockade was imposed on the State of Qatar by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (neighboring countries), and Egypt. We exploit this exogenous increase in air transportation costs toward non-blockading countries to examine the effect of increased travel distance, due to re-routing, on bilateral trade. Based on a gravity model estimated using a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator, we find a distance elasticity of imports between −0.3 and −0.5. Overcoming the limitations of cross-sectional studies and taking advantage of this quasi-natural experiment, our findings are robust and revise downward previous estimates of the distance elasticity.

中文翻译：

---

距离的严重性：来自贸易禁运的证据


2017 年 6 月 5 日，巴林、沙特阿拉伯、阿拉伯联合酋长国（邻国）和埃及对卡塔尔国实施空域封锁。我们利用前往非封锁国家的航空运输成本的外生增加来研究由于航线改变而增加的旅行距离对双边贸易的影响。基于使用泊松伪最大似然估计器估计的引力模型，我们发现进口的距离弹性在 -0.3 和 -0.5 之间。克服横断面研究的局限性并利用这种准自然实验，我们的研究结果是稳健的，并向下修正了之前对距离弹性的估计。