IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1809.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trade in Northeast Asia: Why do Trade Costs Matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Prabir De

Abstract

Trade costs are often cited as an important determinant of the volume of trade. This paper provides enough evidences to ascertain that today’s trade issues in Northeast Asia go beyond the traditional mechanisms of tariffs, and include “behind-the-border” issues. By estimating a modified gravity equation, controlling for endogeneity and remoteness, we find that variations in transaction costs along with trade infrastructure facilities have significant influence on regional trade flows in Northeast Asia. On average, 10 percent saving in transaction costs increases imports by about 5 percent in Northeast Asia. This paper concludes that when tariffs tend to become low in Northeast Asia, the economies in this region could potentially benefit substantially from higher trade provided trade costs are well controlled.

Suggested Citation

  • Prabir De, 2006. "Trade in Northeast Asia: Why do Trade Costs Matter?," CESifo Working Paper Series 1809, CESifo.
  • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1809
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1809.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simeon Djankov & Caroline Freund & Cong S. Pham, 2010. "Trading on Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 166-173, February.
    2. Bergstrand, Jeffrey H, 1989. "The Generalized Gravity Equation, Monopolistic Competition, and the Factor-Proportions Theory in International Trade," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 143-153, February.
    3. Bougheas, Spiros & Demetriades, Panicos O. & Morgenroth, Edgar L. W., 1999. "Infrastructure, transport costs and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 169-189, February.
    4. Yann Duval, 2006. "Cost and Benefits of Implementing Trade Facilitation Measures under Negotiations at the WTO: an Exploratory Survey," Working Papers 306, Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT), an initiative of UNESCAP and IDRC, Canada..
    5. Limao, Nuno & Venables, Anthony J., 1999. "Infrastructure, geographical disadvantage, and transport costs," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2257, The World Bank.
    6. Lucian Cernat, 2001. "ASSESSING REGIONAL TRADE ARRANGEMENTS: ARE SOUTH–SOUTH RTAs MORE TRADE DIVERTING?," International Trade 0109001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Anderson, James E, 1979. "A Theoretical Foundation for the Gravity Equation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 106-116, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khan, Imran Ullah & Kalirajan, Kaliappa, 2011. "The impact of trade costs on exports: An empirical modeling," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 1341-1347, May.
    2. Eric Tremolada Álvarez, 2018. "La Cooperación Internacional como alternativa a los unilateralismos. colección Ius Cogens n.° 6," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 1037.
    3. Haider A. Khan, 2006. "Soft Infrastructure, Trading Costs and Regional Co-operation ," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-457, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    4. Baajiikhuu Tuguldur & Magnus C. M. Brod, 2021. "Regional Economic Cooperation and Integration in Northeast Asia—The way forward under the GTI Framework," Discussion papers 2107, ERINA - Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chahir Zaki, 2008. "Does trade facilitation matter in bilateral trade?," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne bla08100, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    2. Martinez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada & Nowak-Lehmann, Felicitas, 2003. "Augmented Gravity Model: An Empirical Application to Mercosur-European Union Trade Flows," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 6(2), pages 1-26, November.
    3. Cardamone, Paola, 2007. "A Survey of the Assessments of the Effectiveness of Preferential Trade Agreements using Gravity Models," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 60(4), pages 421-473.
    4. Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso & Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann D. & Nicholas Horsewood, 2006. "Effects of Regional Trade Agreements Using a Static and Dynamic Gravity Equation," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 149, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Ghatak, Subrata & Piperakis, Andromachi S., 2007. "The impact of Eastern European immigration to UK trade," Economics Discussion Papers 2007-3, School of Economics, Kingston University London.
    6. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    7. Festus Ebo Turkson, 2011. "Logistics and Bilateral Exports in Developing Countries: A Multiplicative Form Estimation of the Logistics Augmented Gravity Equation," Discussion Papers 11/06, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    8. Ghulam Shabbir & Amjad Naveed & Muhammad Ali Khan & Shabib Haider Syed, 2022. "Does Peace Promote Bilateral Trade Flows? An Economic Analysis of Panel Data in Asian Perspective," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 64(1), pages 143-158, March.
    9. Francois, Joseph & Manchin, Miriam, 2013. "Institutions, Infrastructure, and Trade," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 165-175.
    10. Yongcheol Shin & Laura Serlenga, 2004. "Gravity Models of the Intra-EU Trade: Application of the Hausman-Taylor Estimation in Heterogeneous Panels with Common Time-specific Factors," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 671, Econometric Society.
    11. Nazia Gul & Hafiz M. Yasin, 2011. "The Trade Potential of Pakistan: An Application of the Gravity Model," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 16(1), pages 23-62, Jan-Jun.
    12. NOWAK-LEHMANN D., Felicitas & HERZER, Dierk & VOLLMER, Sebastian, 2007. "The Free Trade Agreement Between Chile And The Eu: Its Potential Impact On Chile’S Export Industry," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 7(1).
    13. Mustafizur Rahman & Wasel Bin Shadat & Narayan Chandra Das, 2006. "Trade Potential in SAFTA: An Application of Augmented Gravity Model," CPD Working Paper 61, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).
    14. Mariana Vijil & Laurent Wagner, 2012. "Does Aid for Trade Enhance Export Performance? Investigating the Infrastructure Channel," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(7), pages 838-868, July.
    15. Inmaculada Martínez‐Zarzoso & Felicitas Nowak‐Lehmann D. & Stephan Klasen & Mario Larch, 2009. "Does German Development Aid Promote German Exports?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 10(3), pages 317-338, August.
    16. Scorbureanu, Alexandrina Ioana, 2007. "The competitive advantage in The Middle East. An empirical approach," MPRA Paper 17965, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Inmaculada Martinez-Zarzoso & Celestino Suarez-Burguet, 2005. "Transport costs and trade: Empirical evidence for Latin American imports from the European union," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 353-371.
    18. Marie M. Stack & Martin Bliss, 2020. "EU economic integration agreements, Brexit and trade," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 156(3), pages 443-473, August.
    19. Buys, Piet & Deichmann, Uwe & Wheeler, David, 2006. "Road network upgrading and overland trade expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4097, The World Bank.
    20. Martínez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada & Felicitas, Nowak-Lehmann D. & Horsewood, Nicholas, 2009. "Are regional trading agreements beneficial?: Static and dynamic panel gravity models," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 46-65, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    trade costs; transaction costs; infrastructure; regional trade; tariff;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1809. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.