Tag: Trade costs
Non-Tariff Measures in the Context of Export Promotion Policies
This brief focuses on the role of non-tariff measures (NTMs) in international trade. While multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations have resulted in worldwide reductions in tariffs, we observe an increasing trend in the application of non-tariff measures. In this brief, we will discuss the evidence of the effect of such measures on exports. The brief also contributes to the discussion of export promotion policies: whether governments, especially in developing countries, should concentrate their efforts to remove only external barriers since there is empirical evidence that internal barriers are no less important for exports.
Economists, policy makers and international organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of non-tariff measures (NTMs) as substantial impediments to international trade. A survey conducted by UNCTAD among exporters in several developing countries ranks SPS and TBT measures the top trade barriers with on average 73 percent of the respondents viewing them as the primary trade barrier (UNCTAD 2010). The World Bank published a book on NTBs where different authors contributed chapters addressing many aspects of the NTMs (World Bank, 2012). The World Trade Organization (WTO) itself devoted its entire 2012 World Trade Report to such measures with a particular focus on technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures. Availability of the new datasets on NTBs allowed researchers to study the effect of these measures on intensive (changes for existing exports) and extensive margins (changes due to entry and exit into exporting) of trade.
Even though trade theory does not specifically address the question of non-tariff barriers that include (but are not limited to) technical regulations, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, the logic of traditional models can easily be extended to these measures. In particular, they can be thought of as part of the fixed/additive costs for exporting firms as they impose compliance costs on exporters. These compliance costs are related to potential adjustments of production processes, and certification procedures needed to meet the requirements of countries imposing such regulations and standards (Schlueter et al., 2009). In a Melitz-type model, these costs are expected to have a negative impact on volumes of trade, number of exporters and number of goods exported. At the same time, average exports per firm may actually increase as the export market-shares are reallocated towards firms that are more efficient.
The existing empirical evidence of the impact of NTMs is mixed; researchers have found both positive and negative effects. The differences in results depend largely on the sector, country and type of NTM imposed. While the effect may overall be negative or null, for some sectors the effect is found to be positive (Moenius, 2004; Fontagné et al., 2005; Chen et al., 2006; Disdier et al., 2008; Medin and Melchior, 2015).
In a recent working paper, Besedina (2015) investigates the effect of introducing an NTM (either SPS or TBT) on export dynamics (in particular, exports concentration and entry and exit into exporting) using the World Bank Exporters database, with a special focus on trade in foodstuff. In particular, we examine how TBT and SPS measures affect export concentration and diversification (both at product and destination level) as well as entry and exit of firms into exporting. If introduction of an NTM increases costs of exporting, the ‘new’ trade theory started by Melitz (2003) predicts that some exporters will stop to export and thus the number of exported product varieties will fall as well (change in extensive margin).
The most important result from our analysis is that the introduction of a TBT or an SPS measure does not seem to affect sectoral export dynamics. Given the above discussion, this result may appear surprising at first. What can possibly explain this zero effect?
First, one may argue that the sector dynamic variables we use in our analysis may not capture changes in the behavior of economic agents (firms) well: while marginal firms may be affected by technical barriers and SPS, averaging across firms may actually conceal this. However, in our analysis we investigate exports at a relatively disaggregated level (4-digit product lines). So while averaging might be a concern, we believe it is not likely to be driving the zero effect.
Second, the concern is that the effect of introducing an NTM measure may not be felt immediately (within one year). In order to verify this, we include lagged trade-barrier variables two periods, but the results were unchanged. Third, it may be the case that it is the number of NTMs rather than the introduction of them that matters. In order to address this point, we performed the same type of analysis using the change in the number of measures introduced. The results were again not affected, and we still do not find any statistically significant relationship between NTMs and exports dynamics.
Despite the absence of an effect of NTMs, this paper reveals an important and policy-relevant finding: the home country’s business environment and institutional factors are important determinants of export performance. It is rather the monetary costs and more complicated exporting procedures imposed by the NTM measures that hamper product and market diversification of the country’s exporters. Hence, policy makers, especially in developing countries, should not only be concerned with removing external barriers to exports (like NTMs) but should also aim to reduce internal barriers and costs imposed on exporting firms by corrupt practices and burdensome regulatory procedures.
Another important dimension for domestic policies towards exporters stems from the work by Melchior (2015, forthcoming) who studies Norwegian exports to BRICS countries overtime and shows that export growth largely depends on the intensive margin (it explains 93 percent of the export growth). Using firm-level data for seafood exports, he finds that only 54% of “trades” – measured as firm/importing country/product combinations – survive from one year to the next. Hence, there is massive “churning” (entry and exit at the same time), and churning is relatively more important in small and in growing export markets. In other words, exporting companies constantly enter and exit foreign markets, add new products, or discontinue exporting some products. A policy implication from this finding is that export-promotion offices should help firms stay in export markets rather than focus on entering these markets. Hence, while it is important to enable domestic firms to enter foreign markets, it seems equally important to ensure their survival in foreign markets, which can be facilitated by a removal of both external and internal barriers.
▪
References
- Disdier, A-S, L. Fontagné and M. Mimouni (2008), “The Impact of Regulations on Agricultural Trade: Evidence from the SPS and TBT Agreements”, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 90(2): 336-350.
- Fontagné, L., F. von Kirchbach, and M. Mimouni (2005). “An Assessment of Environmentally-related Non-tariff Measures”, The World Economy 28(10): 1417-1439.
- Medin H. and A. Melchior (2015) ”Trade barriers or trade facilitators? On the heterogeneous impact of food standards in international trade”, NUPI mimeo
- Melchior (2015) ” Non-tariff barriers, firm heterogeneity and trade: A study of seafood exports, with a particular focus on BRICs”, NUPI mimeo
- Melitz, M. J. (2003), “The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity,” Econometrica, 71(6): 1695–1725.
- Moenius, J. (2004), “Information versus Product Adaptation: The Role of Standards in Trade”, Working Paper, International Business & Markets Research Center, Northwestern University mimeo.
- UNCTAD (2010), Non-Tariff Measures: Evidence from Selected Developing Countries and Future Research Agenda (UNCTAD/DITC/TAB/2009/3). New York and Geneva.
- World Bank (2012), Non-Tariff Measures – A Fresh Look at Trade Policy’s New Frontier, ed. O. Cadot and M. Malouche, The World Bank, Washington D.C.
Export Costs of Visa Restrictions
We study the role of visa restrictions in determining export flows between firms and countries, and find a significant negative impact of visa restrictions. Our results indicate that visa costs not only diminish the value of export, but also the probability of new firms to enter visa restricted foreign markets. We interpret these results as evidence that visa restrictions contribute to trade costs faced by exporting firms.
There is no doubt that policy decisions in the area of foreign relations influence economic links between countries. However, quantifying these effects is usually very difficult – not least because visa regimes are relatively stable over time, not allowing for sufficient variation to estimate the effect of a regime change. As a result, decision-making is often based on very limited quantitative grounds, and mostly driven by qualitative intuition and strong political preferences. However, these decisions might have very important redistributive effects and create unequal access to markets for producers from different countries. For example, while WTO emphasizes a nondiscrimination clause to be one of the main principles of trade policies for member countries, foreign policy might become a very important source of discrimination in international trade.
An example of such policy decisions is visa requirement for foreign visitors. The channel of the effect is rather intuitive – visa requirements on foreign nationals might affect the intensity and costs of business visits needed to establish trade relations between firms in different countries.
In Kapelko and Volchkova (2015) we test the impact of foreign visa requirements on the international trade based on the Russian case. The Russian economy represents a unique setting to study the effect of visas on trade flows. Over the first decade of 2000, there were more than 30 visa regime changes between Russia and foreign countries. Thereby, there is sufficient variation for quantifying the export costs of visa restrictions.
Evidence
Economists observe that when a pair of countries has visa restrictions – both bilateral and unilateral – their bilateral trade flows, tourist exchanges, and FDI flows are smaller compared to pairs of similar countries without these restrictions (Neumayer, 2011). The anecdotal evidence also indicates that business meetings, conferences and other interactions which involve people from different countries are often cancelled or delayed due to the failure of some participants to obtain visa stamps on time. Therefore, we can assume that costs of visas for international transactions include not only simple monetary costs associated with the visa fee but also less predictable components such as the risk of refusal, time costs, etc.
Economic research often relies on some intrinsic features of goods or industries as a way to test the hypothesis. Namely, if the extent of the studied effect depends on these features then one would compare the effects across goods or industries controlling for the features. In our case, if the effect of visas is due to risks associated with the inability of businessmen to attend meetings or negotiations, then we can expect a negative effect of visa restrictions on trade flows, which will be stronger for goods trade since it requires more interactions between the buyer and seller. For this study, we rely on Rauch’s (Rauch, 1999) definition of relation specific goods and compare the effect of visas across goods with different degrees of sensitivities to the relations.
Method
The recent developments in trade theory and empirical research provide a specification of structural relations between country-level bilateral costs of trade and firm level decision to export. The heterogeneous firms approach brought by Marc Melitz (Melitz, 2003) to the international trade framework emphasizes that fixed costs of exporting play an important role in shaping patterns of exports. The literature distinguishes between fixed and variable costs of exporting, but the empirical evidence on cost composition is very limited and very little is known so far about the fixed costs of exporting. We proxy both these costs with visa restrictions, and use heterogeneity in firms’ decisions whether to export or not, to various destinations, to estimate the effect of visas on market access and trade flows.
Data
We combine annual data on exporters, volume of export of each exporter to each destination from the Russian Customs Transaction Database with data on all bilateral visa constraints for the period 2003-2010 between Russia and 180 foreign export destinations.
First, we test whether Russian firms export less to countries which impose strict visa restrictions compared to countries with less restrictive visa regimes or visa waiver programs, other things being equal. We test these effects separately for trade in goods which are more specific to the parties involved in the transaction (relation-specific goods, such as manufactured goods, and equipment with specific technical requirements on part of buyer) and trade in goods that depend less on the parties involved in the transactions (non-relation specific goods, such as more homogeneous, standard goods) (Rauch, 1999). Then, we estimate the effects of visa restrictions on the value of trade to chosen destinations.
The obvious concern is that visa decisions are dependent on trade. Politicians might facilitate visa negotiations if the country’s economic interests expand toward some destinations. It might for example affect visa waivers between countries. To deal with this issue we use tourist flows between countries as an instrument to allow for more accurate measurement of visa effects.
Our empirical strategy is to use the two-stage least squares approach with weighing in the second step to eliminate the potential bias due to selection into exporters to particular destination (Imbens and Wooldridge (2009)).
Results
Our results indicate that visas have a strong negative effect on market access, and it is twice as high for export of relation-specific goods as for export of non-relation specific goods. Controlling for the choice of destination, visas have a significant negative effect on the value of exports of relation-specific goods as well.
More specifically, our estimations indicate that:
- the probability of the firm to export to visa-restricted destinations is below the probability of export to visa-free destinations. The probability gap is estimated to be about 36 percent for the overall sample, 40% for relationship specific transactions and 26% for non-relationship specific export.
- the value of exports for relation specific goods is negatively affected by visa restrictions while there is no effect of visa restrictions on the export of non-relation specific goods. Our estimations indicate that the effect of visa is quite substantial so the value of relation specific export is twice as low to visa restricted as to visa free destinations.
These results emphasize the economic importance of visa restrictions and they are consistent with the assumption that visa restrictions do, in fact, contribute to the costs of market access. The negative effect of visa restrictions on the value of exports of relationship specific goods indicates that they also contribute to the variable costs of export.
Conclusions
The implications of this analysis may be very important. It demonstrates that visa regimes play a role as a non-tariff restriction or as a barrier, and can have significant effects on the development of trade relations between countries. The losses in trade due to visa restrictions are both extensive and intensive in nature: fewer firms are engaged in trade between countries with strong visa restrictions and they trade less in terms of more sophisticated goods. Therefore, we document at least two types of distortions in trade flows due to visas: visa distorts trade relations across countries with different visa requirements, and visa distorts trade flows across different types of goods to destinations with different visa requirements. Given the substantial negative effects of visas on trade relations, it is worth accounting for these economic costs when Ministries of Foreign Affairs engage in negotiations toward visa waivers.
References
- Helpman, E., M. Melitz, and Y. Rubinstein. 2008. Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 123 No2, 441-487.
- Imbens, G., and J. Wooldridge . 2009. “Recent developments in the econometrics of program evaluation”. Journal of Economic Literature, 47(1) pp5-86
- Kapelko, N., and N. Volchkova. 2015. “Export costs of visa restrictions”, CEFIR Working Paper, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2243136
- Melitz, M. J. 2003. “The impact of trade on intra-industry reallocations and aggregate industry productivity.” Econometrica 71(6).
- Neumayer, E. 2011. “On the Detrimental Impact of Visa Restrictions on Bilateral Trade and Foreign Direct Investment.” Applied Geography 31 (3): 901–907.
- Rauch, J. E. 1999. “Networks Versus Markets in International Trade.” Journal of International Economics 48 (1): 7–35.
The Customs Union Between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan: Some Evidence from the New Tariff Rates and Trade Flows
Author: Arevik Mkrtchyan, European University Institute.
This brief addresses the Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan that was established in 2010. It argues that the external tariff schedule reflects a compromise between the interests of its members rather than simple expansion of Russian influence on the CU partners, and that the reduction in trade costs due to elimination of internal borders, benefits both the members of the CU and their external trade partners. Moreover, the impact of alleviated non-tariff trade costs on trade flows is strong and significant, while the tariff impact is insignificant for all members.