This paper examines how geopolitical tensions and transport modes jointly influence international trade flows within a structural gravity framework. Using bilateral trade data from 2011 to 2023 for the world’s top 40 trading nations, we combine measures of geopolitical distance with detailed information on dominant transport modes (air, maritime, and land). Employing Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimations with extensive fixed effects, we find that time-varying geopolitical distance significantly reduces trade flows, particularly in recent years marked by heightened global tensions. However, the magnitude of this effect varies by transport mode: air and maritime trade appear more resilient to geopolitical frictions than land-based exchanges. Our findings highlight that the sensitivity of trade to geopolitics depends critically on the logistical channels through which goods are exchanged. By integrating political alignment and transport structures into the gravity model, this study provides new insights into the resilience and vulnerability of global trade networks in an era of rising geopolitical uncertainty.
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Pour citer :
Lucien Chaffa, Thierry Warin, & Martin Trépanier. Geopolitics and Transport Modes Effects of the Gravity Model, 12 November 2025, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7941156/v1]
