Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement

The 2013 World Trade Organization ministerial in Bali produced a comprehensive framework agreement on trade facilitation. If fully implemented, the agreement should increase the speed and reduce the cost of moving goods across international borders. But which reforms are most likely to improve these...

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Main Authors:	Hillberry, Russell, Zhang, Xiaohui
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	en_US
Published:	World Bank Group, Washington, DC 2015
Subjects:	trade facilitation trade costs customs reform World Trade Organization discrete-time transition model multiple imputation WTO
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21650

id	okr-10986-21650
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-216502021-04-23T14:04:03Z Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement Hillberry, Russell Zhang, Xiaohui trade facilitation trade costs customs reform World Trade Organization discrete-time transition model multiple imputation WTO The 2013 World Trade Organization ministerial in Bali produced a comprehensive framework agreement on trade facilitation. If fully implemented, the agreement should increase the speed and reduce the cost of moving goods across international borders. But which reforms are most likely to improve these outcomes, how much improvement should be expected, and what might such improvements be worth? This paper adopts the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's trade facilitation indicators as quantitative descriptions of trade facilitation policy. It estimates the impact of the indicators and other variables on the time necessary to clear customs, the associated cost, and a customs performance index. Of the 12 policy bundles, the good governance and impartiality indicator is most clearly related to customs clearance time. A move to best practice in all policies by all World Trade Organization members would reduce the predicted time spent in customs by an average of 1.6 days for imports and 2 days for exports. Using a conservative estimate of the value of time in trade, such comprehensive reforms imply a mean tariff equivalent reduction of 0.9 percentage points on imports and 1.2 percentage points on exports. The same estimates are used to calculate welfare gains of policy reform by World Trade Organization members. Reform in China alone accounts for roughly one-fourth of the global benefits from the Trade Facilitation Agreement. 2015-03-31T14:23:08Z 2015-03-31T14:23:08Z 2015-03 Working Paper http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21650 en_US Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7211 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank Group, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	trade facilitation trade costs customs reform World Trade Organization discrete-time transition model multiple imputation WTO
spellingShingle	trade facilitation trade costs customs reform World Trade Organization discrete-time transition model multiple imputation WTO Hillberry, Russell Zhang, Xiaohui Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7211
description	The 2013 World Trade Organization ministerial in Bali produced a comprehensive framework agreement on trade facilitation. If fully implemented, the agreement should increase the speed and reduce the cost of moving goods across international borders. But which reforms are most likely to improve these outcomes, how much improvement should be expected, and what might such improvements be worth? This paper adopts the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's trade facilitation indicators as quantitative descriptions of trade facilitation policy. It estimates the impact of the indicators and other variables on the time necessary to clear customs, the associated cost, and a customs performance index. Of the 12 policy bundles, the good governance and impartiality indicator is most clearly related to customs clearance time. A move to best practice in all policies by all World Trade Organization members would reduce the predicted time spent in customs by an average of 1.6 days for imports and 2 days for exports. Using a conservative estimate of the value of time in trade, such comprehensive reforms imply a mean tariff equivalent reduction of 0.9 percentage points on imports and 1.2 percentage points on exports. The same estimates are used to calculate welfare gains of policy reform by World Trade Organization members. Reform in China alone accounts for roughly one-fourth of the global benefits from the Trade Facilitation Agreement.
format	Working Paper
author	Hillberry, Russell Zhang, Xiaohui
author_facet	Hillberry, Russell Zhang, Xiaohui
author_sort	Hillberry, Russell
title	Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement
title_short	Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement
title_full	Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement
title_fullStr	Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement
title_full_unstemmed	Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement
title_sort	policy and performance in customs : evaluating the trade facilitation agreement
publisher	World Bank Group, Washington, DC
publishDate	2015
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21650
_version_	1764448877700710400

Policy and Performance in Customs : Evaluating the Trade Facilitation Agreement

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