Corruption and imperfect contract enforcement dramatically reduce trade. This paper estimates the reduction, using a structural model of import demand in which transactions costs impose a price markup on traded goods. We find that inadequate institutions constrain trade far more than tariffs do. We also find that omitting indexes of institutional quality from the model leads to an underestimate of home bias. Using a broad sample of countries, we find that the traded goods expenditure share declines significantly as income per capita rises, other things equal. Cross-country variation in the effectiveness of institutions offers a simple explanation of the observed global pattern of trade, in which high-income, capital-abundant countries trade disproportionately with one another.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
7000.
Length: Date of creation: Mar 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7000
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Find related papers by JEL classification: F1 - International Economics - - Trade D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
James E. Anderson & Douglas Marcouiller, 1997.
"Trade and Security,I: Anarchy,"
NBER Working Papers
6223, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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