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Institutions, infrastructure, and trade

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Author Info
Francois, Joseph
Manchin, Miriam

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Abstract

The authors examine the influence of infrastructure, institutional quality, colonial and geographic context, and trade preferences on the pattern of bilateral trade. They are interested in threshold effects, and so emphasize those cases where bilateral country pairs do not actually trade. The authors depart from the institutions and infrastructure literature in this respect, using selection-based gravity modeling of trade flows. They also depart from this literature by mixing principal components (to condense the institutional and infrastructure measures) with a focus on deviations in the resulting indexes from expected values for given income cohorts to control for multicollinearity. The authors work with a panel of 284,049 bilateral trade flows from 1988 to 2002. Matching bilateral trade and tariff data and controlling for tariff preferences, level of development, and standard distance measures, they find that infrastructure and institutional quality are significant determinants not only of export levels, but also of the likelihood exports will take place at all. Their results support the notion that export performance, and the propensity to take part in the trading system at all, depends on institutional quality and access to well-developed transport and communications infrastructure. Indeed, this dependence is far more important, empirically, than variations in tariffs in explaining sample variations in North-South trade.

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Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 4152.

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Date of creation: 01 Mar 2007
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4152

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Keywords: Transport Economics Policy&Planning; Free Trade; Economic Theory&Research; Trade Law; Trade Policy;

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  2. Bolaky, Bineswaree & Freund, Caroline, 2004. "Trade, regulations, and growth," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3255, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Gabriel J. Felbermayr & Wilhelm Kohler, 2004. "Exploring the Intensive and Extensive Margins of World Trade," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Obstfeld, Maurice & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1995. "Exchange Rate Dynamics Redux," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 624-60, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Francisco Rodriguez & Dani Rodrik, 1999. "Trade Policy and Economic Growth: A Skeptic's Guide to the Cross-national Evidence," Electronic Working Papers 99-003, University of Maryland, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Roberts, Mark J & Tybout, James R, 1997. "The Decision to Export in Colombia: An Empirical Model of Entry with Sunk Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 545-64, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Romain Wacziarg & Karen Horn Welch, 2003. "Trade Liberalization and Growth: New Evidence," NBER Working Papers 10152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Rikhil Bhavnani & David T. Coe & Arvind Subramanian & Natalia T. Tamirisa, 2002. "The Missing Globalization Puzzle," IMF Working Papers 02/171, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Dani Rodrik & Arvind Subramanian & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 131-165, 06. [Downloadable!]
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  19. Wilson, John S. & Mann, Catherine L. & Otsuki, Tsunehiro, 2004. "Assessing the potential benefit of trade facilitation : A global perspective," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3224, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  20. Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2006. "The World Distribution of Income: Falling Poverty and ... Convergence, Period," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 121(2), pages 351-397, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  24. David Dollar & Aart Kraay, 2004. "Trade, Growth, and Poverty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(493), pages F22-F49, 02. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  25. Jon Haveman & David Hummels, 2004. "Alternative hypotheses and the volume of trade: the gravity equation and the extent of specialization," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 37(1), pages 199-218, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Yue Li & John S. Wilson, 2009. "Trade Facilitation and Expanding the Benefits of Trade: Evidence from Firm Leval Data," Working Papers 7109, Asia-Pacific Research and Training Network on Trade (ARTNeT), an initiative of UNESCAP and IDRC, Canada.. [Downloadable!]
  2. Shepherd , Ben & Wilson, John S., 2008. "Trade facilitation in ASEAN member countries : measuring progress and assessing priorities," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4615, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Mahvash Saeed Qureshi, 2008. "Africa's Oil Abundance and External Competitiveness: Do Institutions Matter?," IMF Working Papers 08/172, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  4. Martin, Will & Pham, Cong S., 2008. "Estimating the Gravity Equation when Zero Trade Flows are Frequent," MPRA Paper 9453, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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