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Measuring international trade policy: a primer on trade restrictiveness indices

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  • Cletus C. Coughlin

Abstract

Measuring the overall restrictiveness of a country's international trade policies is important and, in fact, essential for estimating the effects of trade policies and for negotiations to reduce trade barriers. A good measure is also difficult to produce: Trade restrictiveness indices are constructed by combining the actual structure of trade restrictions, which is generally quite different across goods, into a single number. Under certain assumptions, this single number is the uniform tariff that would produce the same trade restrictiveness as the actual differentiated structure of restrictions. In this paper, the economic intuition underlying the construction of these indices is presented and estimates of these indices and the resulting insights are summarized.

Suggested Citation

  • Cletus C. Coughlin, 2010. "Measuring international trade policy: a primer on trade restrictiveness indices," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 92(Sep), pages 381-394.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2010:i:sep:p:381-394:n:v.92no.5
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    11. Peter J. Lloyd & Johanna L. Croser & Kym Anderson, 2009. "Global Distortions to Agricultural Markets: New Indicators of Trade and Welfare Impacts, 1955 to 2007," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2009-13, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
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    Cited by:

    1. Desi Peneva & Rati Ram, 2012. "Trade policy and human development: a cross-country perspective," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 40(1), pages 51-67, December.
    2. Mr. Justin O Zake, 2011. "Customs Administration Reform and Modernization in anglophone Africa: Early 1990's to Mid-2010," IMF Working Papers 2011/184, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Gheorghe Săvoiu & Vasile Dinu & Laurenţiu Tăchiciu, 2012. "Romania Foreign Trade in Global Recession, Revealed by the Extended Method of Exchange Rate Indicators," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 14(31), pages 173-194, February.
    4. Cletus C. Coughlin, 2012. "Extensive and intensive trade margins: a state-by-state view," Working Papers 2012-002, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    5. Subhayu Bandyopadhyay & Cletus C. Coughlin, 2014. "Determinants of trade margins: insights using state export data," Working Papers 2014-6, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    6. Chen, Bo & Ma, Hong & Xu, Yuan, 2014. "Measuring China’s trade liberalization: A generalized measure of trade restrictiveness index," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 994-1006.

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