Suchergebnisse

Numerous studies have shown that infrastructure has a positive impact on international trade. For instance, benefit of infrastructure can be shared with many stakeholders especially with the poor ones in a remote area. Hence, a good infrastructure can lower market access restriction, opportunity costs and increase the likelihood of participating in the benefit of international trade. However, existing studies have mainly focused on the traditional determinants of trade costs such as distance and border effects overtime. The role of infrastructure towards trade costs was largely overlooked. Infrastructure is not just limited to public utilities but also includes information and communication technology (ICT), political and social network, and some aspect of soft infrastructure such as management practice, operating procedures and policies development. Some studies proved that infrastructure has significant and relatively large impact on trade flows especially in telecommunication infrastructure. Infrastructure development is important as a tool to speed up the economic integration within the region particularly in the area of international trade and investment. Efficient infrastructure can expand linkages to supply chain by lowering trade costs and increasing value added that is translated into potential profitability. As infrastructure expands, it motivates regional cooperation in infrastructure development, intraregional trade and broadens the investment that eventually lower the trade costs among countries. Following recent empirical studies that emphasize the importance of infrastructure, this paper examines the role of infrastructure in explaining trade costs in ASEAN-5 member countries namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Arguably, countries with good infrastructure will have less trade costs and this empirical study aims at shedding a light on the role of infrastructure towards trade costs by grouping infrastructure into four types which are land, sea, air and ICT and utilities ...

Central Asian governments frequently express the goal of economic diversification, and specifically of diversifying their agricultural sector, but with little actual impact. Diversification has not happened because high trade costs discourage farmers, potential foreign investors and others from identifying new products that could be produced competitively. This paper reviews recent international literature on trade costs, and the limited Central Asian evidence. Because of high trade costs, the phenomenon of global value chains has scarcely touched Central Asia, apart from a few cases in the Kyrgyz Republic. The examples of clothing and beans illustrate how a Central Asian country has joined international value chains. The paper draws conclusions about how Central Asian countries wishing to diversify their agricultural sectors could draw upon this experience. ; Viele zentralasiatische Regierungen verfolgen das Ziel der wirtschaftlichen Diversifizierung, insbesondere im Agrarsektor, allerdings oftmals mit geringer Wirkung. Hohe Handelskosten halten Landwirte, potenzielle ausländische Investoren und andere Akteure davon ab, neue Produkte zu entwickeln, die sie anschließend wettbewerbsfähig vermarkten können. Auf diese Weise wird eine wirtschaftliche Diversifizierung verhindert. Dieser Beitrag behandelt einige neuere internationale Arbeiten über Handelskosten und stellt empirisches Material mit Zentralasienbezug vor. Aufgrund der hohen Handelskosten hat Zentralasien, abgesehen von einigen Fällen in Kirgisistan, bisher kaum teil an globalen Wertschöpfungsketten. Beispiele aus den Bereichen Kleidung und Bohnenproduktion zeigen, wie ein zentralasiatisches Land in internationale Wertschöpfungsketten eingegliedert werden kann. Abschließend wird aufgezeigt, wie zentralasiatische Länder von diesen Erfahrungen lernen können, wenn sie eine weitere Diversifizierung ihrer Wirtschaft anstreben.

AbstractWe develop a monopolistic competition model with non‐homothetic factor input bundles where increasing quality requires increasing use of skilled workers. As a result more skill abundant countries export higher quality, higher priced goods. Using a multi‐country dataset, we test and confirm the findings in Schott of a positive effect of skill abundance on unit values identified with US data. We extend the core model with per unit trade costs leading to the Washington apples effect that goods shipped over larger distance are of higher quality. The combination of high‐quality goods being relatively skill intensive with the Washington apples effect implies that countries at a larger distance from their trading partners display a higher skill premium. Simulating our model, we find that a doubling of distance of a country relative to all its trading partners raises the skill premium in a country by about 1.6%.