ABSTRACT

Trade facilitation, by reducing trade costs and raising the efficiency of moving goods across borders, is integral to international trade. Using novel data on bilateral time and cost measures for trade facilitation in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Program, this study estimates the trade impact of reducing time and costs at border crossing points within CAREC. The gravity model estimations show that reducing time by 10% at the inbound border increases trade among CAREC countries by 1 − 2%. Trade impact of reduction in time and costs at the inbound border is estimated to be higher than that at the outbound border. We also find that the trade impact of reducing time at the inbound border increases with the severity of time bottleneck and the trade impact is more effective in recent year since 2013.

摘要

通过降低贸易成本和提高跨境货物运输效率来实现贸易便利化是国际贸易不可或缺的一部分。本研究利用中亚区域经济合作 (CAREC) 计划中关于贸易便利化双边时间和成本措施的新数据，估计了减少 CAREC 内过境点的时间和成本对贸易的影响。重力模型估计表明，入境边境的时间减少 10% 可使 CAREC 国家之间的贸易增加 1-2%。据估计，入境边境的时间和成本减少对贸易的影响要高于出境边境。我们还发现，减少入境边境时间的贸易影响随着时间瓶颈的严重程度而增加，并且自 2013 年以来，近年来贸易影响更加有效。