"Time differences have had a negative and statistically significant impact on merchandise trade, at least until recently," said Dr Anderson. He used two main measures of time difference - official time difference, which can be changed by government policy, and solar time difference, which is fixed by the geography of the country. To determine whether time differences affected trade Dr Anderson analysed 55 years' worth of data on exports between 146 countries, details of the geographical distance between them and other factors such as whether there was a common language, a common border or a shared colonial history. Because business travel is still important that makes it more costly and difficult with time differences." These new technologies are not replacing the need for actual travel, face to face contact is still important. "One of the interesting things about globalisation is that although we have all this communication technology, physical travel is still increasing very rapidly. A lot of the debate around time zones has focused more on social aspects such as work habits, safety, making the most of daylight hours and energy use. Dr Anderson, a lecturer in development studies, said: "The issue of whether time differences affect trade is of relevance for governments and policymakers and proposals to change time differences need to take in account potential impacts on international trade, which haven't really been considered. While research has been conducted into the effects of geographical distance, it is only recently that economists have begun to investigate the impact of time differences on international trade. There is also evidence that the negative impact of time differences is smaller where travel and communication would be expected to be less important for trade, for example where people working on a project are based in different countries but share a common language or ethnic background. However the findings, published in the Review of World Economics, also show that the negative impact of time differences has fallen over recent decades, which may be due to the emergence of new communication technologies. The effect of a five hour time difference, such as that between London and New York, was equivalent to an increase in geographical distance of between 1,000km and 3,000km. The study by Dr Edward Anderson, of the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia (UEA), found that each hour of time difference reduced international goods trade by between two and seven per cent.
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