This article examines how the institutional design of borders affects international trade. The authors explore variation in the effects of borders by comparing new international borders that follow precedent and thus have a prior institutional history with new international borders that lack such an institutional history. The former minimally disrupt—or restore—previous economic networks, while the latter fundamentally disrupt existing economic networks. A variety of empirical tests show that, consistent with this institutional perspective on borders, new international boundaries that follow precedent are associated with significantly faster recovery and greater increase in subsequent trade flows. By contrast, when new international borders are truly new, they disrupt local economic networks, introduce new transaction costs, and impose higher adjustment costs on states, which the authors show to have long-term deleterious effects on trade.

中文翻译：

---

国际贸易与协调

本文探讨了边界的制度设计如何影响国际贸易。作者通过比较遵循先例并因此具有先前制度历史的新国际边界与缺乏这种制度历史的新国际边界来探索边界影响的变化。前者最低限度地破坏或恢复以前的经济网络，而后者从根本上破坏现有的经济网络。各种实证检验表明，与这种关于边界的制度观点一致，遵循先例的新国际边界与显着更快的复苏和后续贸易流量的更大增长有关。相比之下，当新的国际边界真正出现时，它们会扰乱当地的经济网络，引入新的交易成本，