Trade facilitation and the measurement of trade costs

Abstract

As tariffs and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) fall attention has shifted to trade facilitation, both in the WTO and in regional arrangements such as ASEAN or APEC. Economists have, however, been slow to develop convincing measures of trade costs. Commonly cited estimates of the border effect or of trade costs are huge, but flawed. The gap between CIF and FOB values of trade is the best aggregate measure, but suffers from lack of consistent data. This paper reviews evidence in the literature based on US and Australian import data, extends the sample to include data from Chile and Brazil and concludes that inferences about trade costs are fairly robust across various countries' import datasets.