Jul 11, 2008

Which countries are double landlocked?

44 countries are landlocked. Being landlocked prevents access to the ocean which, in turn, allows for trade with most of the countries in the world. The landlocked dummy is always significant in all trade gravity equation, so it is a big deal (not just a superficial aspect of a country), even with today's technology.

For example the weighted world average of GDP per capita is approximately $18,000. Of the world's landlocked countries, only two (Switzerland and Austria) have higher GDPs per capita than this average. The weighted average of all landlocked countries is under $4000!

Two countries in the world are double landlocked, which means that they are surrounded only by other landlocked countries: Lichtenstein and... guess which is the other one?

So next time you run a gravity regression, make sure you include that double landlocked dummy.

2 comments:

Rob Britton said...

Damn, I knew Liechtenstein was one, but the other one I had to look on Wikipedia for. I guessed Kazakhstan, which was close...

cosimo said...

Probably Uzbekistan. What is the average weighted by?