About

Jeffrey H. Bergstrand is a professor  emeritus of finance in the Mendoza College of Business and a concurrent professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also a Kellogg Institute for International Studies faculty fellow. He is best known for his early formal theoretical foundations for the “gravity equation” in international trade, which is now the empirical workhorse for studying international trade, foreign direct investment, and migration flows, and the effects of natural and policy frictions on these flows. He has been a Kellogg Institute faculty fellow since 1998.

More recently, he has explored factors that explain the probability that pairs of countries have economic integration agreements, the timing of the formation of such agreements, and the impact of such agreements on countries’ trade. His research team maintains the NSF-Kellogg Institute Data Base on Economic Integration Agreements, which is used by researchers around the world.

Bergstrand has authored more than 50 papers on determinants of international trade flows, foreign direct investment, multinational firm behavior, and real exchange rates in journals such as the American Economic Review and Journal of International Economics. His research has placed him in the top 2 percent of economists in the world, as measured by the Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) project. His first paper published, ‘‘The Gravity Equation in International Trade: Some Microeconomic Foundations and Empirical Evidence"(1985), was noted in 2018 as the eighth most-cited paper overall in the Review of Economics and Statistics in their 100-year history; it was also the most-cited paper of the 1980s.

An economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston from 1981 to 1986, he has consulted with the US, European Union, and Swiss governments on the impacts of economic integration agreements on international trade and foreign direct investment flows and his methodologies continue to influence governments’ policy analyses. Bergstrand also leads the Initiative on International Economic Integration, a Kellogg Institute Policy and Practice Lab that examines issues pertaining to US free trade agreements (FTAs) with the goal of developing a strategic framework and process for the structuring of future US FTAs.

Bergstrand is past president of the International Economics and Finance Society, a global professional society of international trade and finance economists. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Projects

ISP Advisee: 
Catharina Brunner Lopez

Thematic Interests

My research focuses on determinants of international trade flows, especially gravity equations of trade, as well as determinants of and impacts of economic integration agreements on trade flows. I also study determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks, especially gravity equations of FDI, and multinational enterprises' behavior.

Current Research
Research Sub-Discipline
Regions
Research Tags

Journal Articles

Books

Book Chapters

Other Accomplishments & Recognitions
  • Kellogg Institute's Undergraduate Mentoring Award  - 2016-17
  • President, International Economics and Finance Society (IEFS) - 2015-17
  • Visiting Scholar, Indian Institute for Foreign Trade, Kolkata, 2013
  • Visiting Scholar, Singapore Management University, 2012
  • Visiting Scholar, ETH University, Zurich, Switzerland, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012
  • Visiting Scholar, CESifo, Munich, Germany, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011
  • Visiting Scholar, European Commission, Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs Brussels, Belgium, July 2004
  • National Science Foundation Grant 0351154, “Causes and Consequences of the Growth of Regionalism,” July 2004 – June 2009
  • Bhagwati Award in 2003 from Journal of International Economics, Best Paper for 2001-2002, for “The Growth of World Trade: Tariffs, Transport Costs, and Income Similarity.”
  • Listed in RePEc among top 3% of economists in the world; top 1% in international trade in the world (http://ideas.repec.org/e/pbe138.html).
  • Listed beginning in 2003 on Harvard University’s Global Trade Negotiations Individual Researchers
  • webpage linking my webpage to the GTN webpage
  • (http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidtrade/site/resources.html).
  • Visiting Scholar, DIW, Berlin, Germany, 2001.
  • Visiting Scholar, Austrian Institute for Economic Research, Vienna, Austria, 2001.
  • Editorial Board, Review of International Economics, 1996-present. (Associate Editor, 1996-2003).
  • Visiting Scholar, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Sao Paulo, Brazil, July 1998.
  • Executive MBA Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, 1997, 2005. MBA Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, 1991