Trade Policy, Trade Costs, and Developing Country Trade
This paper briefly reviews new indices of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have been developed at the World Bank. The paper also compares the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions applied at the border with the effe...
Main Authors: | , |
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Language: | English |
Published: |
Washington, DC: World Bank
2012
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/12/10115805/trade-policy-trade-costs-developing-country-trade http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6341 |
Summary: | This paper briefly reviews new indices
of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have
been developed at the World Bank. The paper also compares
the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions
applied at the border with the effects of domestic policies
that affect trade costs. Based on a gravity regression
framework, the analysis suggests that tariffs and non-tariff
measures continue to be a significant source of trade
restrictiveness for low-income countries despite
preferential access programs. This is because the value of
trade preferences is quite limited: a new measure of the
relative preference margin developed in the paper reveals
that this is very low for most country-pairs. Most countries
with very good (duty-free) access to a market generally have
competitors that have the same degree of access. The
empirical analysis suggests that measures to improve
logistics performance and facilitate trade are likely to
have the greatest positive effects in expanding developing
country trade, increasing the trade impacts of lowering
remaining border barriers by a factor of two or more. |
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