39 research outputs found
Does Corruption Facilitate Trade for the New EU Members?
The paper uses a gravity model to examine the role of corruption in the direction of trade in a data set comprising OECD economies, new EU members and developing nations. Contrary to a number of studies, the findings suggest that membership of the RTAs does not always increase bilateral trade whereas reducing a country's corruption does tend to increase trade flows. The results suggest that EU membership, with the associated improvement in the perceived level of corruption, should have a positive impact on Romania and Bulgaria
Exports Under the Flicker of the Northern Lights
Picture a small open economy in the North Atlantic Ocean, highly dependent on trade with the EU and NAFTA. How important are these trading blocs to the country's exports? How important is the country's location and size, and how do these affect the export sectors? A unique version of the gravity model is applied here using an inverse hyperbolic sine function. Typically, the export volume is significantly impacted by the economic size of the exporting country, but in this case it is not. This suggests that the exports from small remote economies are driven by different factors than exports from large conomies
The Role of Trade Facilitation in Central Asia: A Gravity Model
With a decrease in formal trade barriers, trade facilitation has come into prominence as a policy tool for promoting trade. In this paper, we use a gravity model to examine the relationship between bilateral trade flows and trade facilitation. We also estimate the gains in trade derived from improvements in trade facilitation for the Central Asian countries. Trade facilitation is measured through the World Bank's Logistic Performance Index (LPI). Our results show that there are significant gains in trade as a result of improving trade facilitation in these countries. These gains in trade vary from 28 percent in the case of Azerbaijan to as much as 63 percent in the case of Tajikistan. Furthermore, intraregional trade increases by 100 percent. Among the different components of LPI, we find that the greatest increase in total trade comes from improvement in infrastructure, followed by logistics and efficiency of customs and other border agencies. Also, our results show that the increase in bilateral trade, due to an improvement in the exporting country's LPI, in highly sophisticated, more differentiated, and high-technology products is greater than the increase in trade in less sophisticated, less differentiated, and lowtechnology products. This is particularly important for the Central Asian countries as they try to reduce their dependence on exports of natural resources and diversify their manufacturing base by shifting to more sophisticated goods. As they look for markets beyond their borders, trade facilitation will have an important role to play