Regional trade is low in sub-saharan Africa. But a large share of regional trade is informal, i.e. not recorded in offcial data. This paper studies the relationship between trade barriers and informality of trade. We use an original survey of informal transactions across Benin's land borders, which provides the first direct and comprehensive account of trade volumes and product coverage for this type of trade. We combine this data with official trade records and exploit variation across products and countries to measure the impact of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade on informality. Increasing tariffs on a given product by 10% makes it about 12% more likely that this product is imported informally rather than formally. Non-tariff measures also increase informality. Our results also suggest that compliance costs, aside from tariffs and regulations, contribute to explain informality.

中文翻译：

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非洲的区域一体化和非正规贸易：来自贝宁边境的证据

撒哈拉以南非洲的区域贸易量很低。但很大一部分区域贸易是非正式的，即没有记录在官方数据中。本文研究贸易壁垒与贸易非正规性之间的关系。我们对跨越贝宁陆地边界的非正式交易进行了原始调查，该调查提供了此类贸易的贸易量和产品覆盖范围的第一个直接和全面的说明。我们将这些数据与官方贸易记录相结合，并利用产品和国家之间的差异来衡量关税和非关税贸易壁垒对非正规性的影响。将特定产品的关税提高 10%，使该产品以非正式方式而非正式方式进口的可能性增加约 12%。非关税措施也增加了非正规性。我们的结果还表明合规成本，