Trade Facilitation and Economic Development : New Approach to Quantifying the Impact

By J. Wilson, Catherine L. Mann, T. Otsuki. 2003

353 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article analyzes the relationship between trade facilitation and trade flows in the Asia Pacific region. Country specific data for port efficiency, customs environment, regulatory environment, and e-business usage are used to construct indicators for measuring trade facilitation. The relationship between these indicators and trade flows is estimated using a gravity model that includes tariffs and other standard variables. Enhanced port efficiency has a large and positive effect on trade flows. Regulatory barriers deter trade. Improvements in customs and greater e-business use significantly expand trade but to a lesser degree than improvements in ports or regulations. The benefits of specific trade facilitation efforts are estimated by quantifying differential improvements in these four areas among members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). A scenario in which APEC members with below-average indicators improve capacity halfway to the average forall members shows that intra-APEC trade could increase by Dollar 254 billion, or 21 percent of intra-APEC trade flows.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c7543f2abf07037997f9a1175869df2b01baa986

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Citations in the corpus

Trade Policy, Trade Costs, and Developing Country Trade (2008, background): “For a more detailed description of the Trade Facilitation Index see Wilson, Mann, and Otsuki (2003).”
Export Performance and Trade Facilitation Reform: Hard and Soft Infrastructure (2010, neutral): “ 2 See, for instance, Wilson et al. (2003, 2005), Francois and Manchin (2007), and Iwanow and Kirkpatrick (2008).”
Port Efficiency and Trade Flows (2007, neutral): “Wilson et al. (2003) and Clark et al. (2004) estimate this relationship using survey measures of port efficiency drawn from the Global Competitiveness Report.”
The Gravity Model Specification for Modeling International Trade Flows and Free Trade Agreement Effects: A 10-Year Review of Empirical Studies (2010, background): “However, most recent studies focus on examining the effects of regional trade agreements, currency unions and common markets and particularly whether these result in creating or diverting trade; in this research area see, for example [5, 31, 38-64].”
Trade policy versus institutional trade barriers: an application using good old ols (2010, methodology): “(2008) “The Effect of Trade Facilitation on Sectoral Trade,” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 8(1) (Topics), Article 42. Available at: http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/vol8/iss1/art42. - Nordas, E. P., Pinali, E. and Grosso, N. G. (2006), "Logistics and Time as a Trade Barrier" OECD Trade”
Trade facilitation and the extensive margin (2013, methodology): “All in the gravity tradition, but using various ways to define and measure trade facilitation and to estimate its results, Wilson, Mann, and Otsuki ( 2003 , 2005 ), Soloaga, Wilson, and Mejia ( 2006 ), Djankov, Freund, and Pham (2010), Persson ( 2008 ), Lee and Park ( 2007 ), Nordas, Pinali, and Ge”
The Effects of Non‐tariff Measures on Agri‐food Trade: A Review and Meta‐analysis of Empirical Evidence (2018, neutral): “For instance, NTMs are likely to be trade-impeding for seafood products (e.g., Anders and Caswell 2009), meat (Wilson et al., 2003), fruits and vegetables, cereals and oil seeds (e.g., Otsuki et al., 2001a, b; Scheepers et al., 2007; Drogué and DeMaria 2012).”
Assessing the Potential Benefit of Trade Facilitation: A Global Perspective (2004, background): “The empirical literature on trade facilitation is limited; it is outlined in more detail in Wilson, Mann, and Otsuki (2003) (henceforth WMO).”
Does aid for trade enhance export performance? Investigating on the infrastructure channel (2012, background): “Perhaps the major examples are Wilson et al. (2003, 2004) who analyse these measures in terms of port efficiency, customs environment, regulatory environment and electronic business-usage for Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation members and for a broader sample of 75 countries.”