Logistics Costs and Competitiveness : Measurement and Trade Policy Applications
This paper examines the issue of measuring logistics costs from an applied trade policy research perspective, as well as identifying logistics-intensive sectors. It focuses on currently available data at the macro-and firm-levels. This paper has...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/455781468153272478/Logistics-costs-and-competitiveness-measurement-and-trade-policy-applications http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26724 |
| Summary: | This paper examines the issue of
measuring logistics costs from an applied trade policy
research perspective, as well as identifying
logistics-intensive sectors. It focuses on currently
available data at the macro-and firm-levels. This paper has
two main aims. First, it provides a first overview of
currently available data relevant to logistics, and suggests
some preliminary applications. The second objective of this
paper is to frame the issue of logistics cost measurement
and data collection in terms of the types of inputs needed
for applied trade policy research. The paper is organized as
follows. The next section presents an overview of possible
directions in applied trade policy research using logistics
data. Section three examines existing data sources that can
be used to measure domestic logistics costs, focusing on the
national accounts, input-output tables, price comparisons,
and firm-level data. Section four presents a new methodology
for measuring international trade costs, and identifies the
proportion of those costs due to logistics. Section five
uses input-output data to identify logistics-intensive
sectors in a range of countries. Section six concludes. This
paper has explored a number of different data sources and
methodologies in an effort to move forward on the analysis
of logistics costs from a trade policy research perspective.
In the future, it will be important to distinguish between
data collection efforts that are industry-driven-such as
estimates of total logistics costs in Gross Domestic Product
(GDP)-and those that are research-driven. Moving further in
this direction will help fuel research that identifies
sectors in particular countries that are most sensitive to
improvements in logistics performance, and which therefore
will tend to expand relative to other sectors in the face of
logistics sector reforms. From a policy and political
economy point of view, it will be important to identify such
sectors and make them aware of the potential role logistics
can play in facilitating their growth. |
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