Conditional GMM estimation for gravity models

This paper studies finite sample performances of the conditional GMM estimators for a particular conditional moment restriction model, which is commonly applied in economic analysis using gravity models of international trade. We consider the GMM estimator with growing moments and Dominguez and Lobato's (2004) process-based GMM estimator. Under the simulation designs by Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2006, 2011), we find that Dominguez and Lobato's (2004) estimator is favorably comparable with the Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimator, and outperforms other estimators.