Séparation politique et désintégration commerciale

Recent papers document severe and rapid trade disintegration following political disintegration. We challenge this result and support the idea that established bilateral trade changes relatively slowly. Using the unique case of former Yugoslavia, we do not find any evidence of a strong and continuous trade disintegration. Moreover, we find that successor states trade still intensively several years after the political disintegration. We also find strong evidence that trade disintegration has been affected by the transition process. In particular, the institutional reforms seem to explain the home bias effect by favoring trade redeployment to outside partners.