IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-02053558.html

Regional Integration and Informal Trade in Africa: Evidence from Benin’s Borders

Author

Listed:
  • Sami Bensassi
  • Joachim Jarreau

    (LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme)

  • Cristina Mitaritonna

    (CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales - Centre d'analyse stratégique)

Abstract

Regional trade is low in sub-saharan Africa. But a large share of regional trade is informal, i.e., not recorded in official data. This paper studies the relationship between trade barriers and informality of trade. We use an original survey of informal transactions across Benin's land borders, which provides the first direct and comprehensive account of trade volumes and product coverage for this type of trade. We combine this data with official trade records and exploit variation across products and countries to measure the impact of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade on informality. Increasing tariffs on a given product by 10% makes it about 12% more likely that this product is imported informally rather than formally. Non-tariff measures also increase informality. Our results also suggest that compliance costs, aside from tariffs and regulations, contribute to explain informality.

Suggested Citation

  • Sami Bensassi & Joachim Jarreau & Cristina Mitaritonna, 2019. "Regional Integration and Informal Trade in Africa: Evidence from Benin’s Borders," Post-Print hal-02053558, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02053558
    DOI: 10.1093/jae/ejy016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boker Poumie & Edmond Noubissi Domguia & Borice Augustin Ngounou & Thierry Messie Pondie & Joseph Nzomo Tcheuta, 2023. "The effect of the informal economy on bilateral exports from sub‐Saharan African countries," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 35(1), pages 65-78, March.
    2. Jakob Rauschendorfer & Ben Shepherd, 2022. "Trade, conflict and informality: Evidence from the South Sudanese civil war," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 867-894, March.
    3. Fabien Candau & Geoffroy Guepie & Reine Kouakou, 2018. "In Gravity no Veritas: Dubious Trade Elasticiy and Weak Effects of Regional Trade Agreements in Africa," Working Papers hal-02625930, HAL.
    4. Bensassi, Sami & Jarreau, Joachim, 2019. "Price discrimination in bribe payments: Evidence from informal cross-border trade in West Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 462-480.
    5. Drinkwater, Stephen & Robinson, Catherine, 2023. "The impact of customs and trade regulations on the operations of African firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    6. Courage Mlambo, 2021. "The Impact of Port Performance on Trade: The Case of Selected African States," Economies, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-18, September.
    7. Stender, Frederik & Vogel, Tim, 2021. "Murky trade waters: Regional tariff commitments and non-tariff measures in Africa," IDOS Discussion Papers 13/2021, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    8. Jacqueline M. Klopp & Melissa Trimble & Eleanor Wiseman, 2022. "Corruption, gender, and small‐scale cross‐border trade in East Africa: A review," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(5), September.
    9. Eberhard-Ruiz, Andreas & Moradi, Alexander, 2019. "Regional market integration in East Africa: Local but no regional effects?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 255-268.
    10. Peter Walkenhorst, 2023. "Disability, Empathy and Trade: Evidence from Small-Scale Cross-Border Transactions in Uganda," Journal of Economic Development, The Economic Research Institute, Chung-Ang University, vol. 48(4), pages 1-17.
    11. Jade Siu, 2020. "Formalising informal cross-border trade: Evidence from One-Stop-Border-Posts in Uganda," Discussion Papers 20-08, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02053558. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.