IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/wtowps/ersd201007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What constrains Africa's exports?

Author

Listed:
  • Freund, Caroline
  • Rocha, Nadia

Abstract

We examine the effects of transit, documentation, and ports and customs delays on Africa's exports. We find that transit delays have the most economically and statically significant effect on exports. A one day reduction in inland travel times leads to a 7 percent increase in exports. Put another way, a one day reduction in inland travel times translates into 1.5 percentage point decrease in all importing-country tariffs. In contrast, longer delays in the other areas have a far smaller impact on trade. We control for the possibility that greater trade leads to shorter delays in three ways. First, we examine the effect of trade times on exports of new products. Second, we evaluate the effect of delays in a transit country on the exports of landlocked countries. Third, we examine whether delays affect time-sensitive goods relatively more. We show that large transit delays are relatively more harmful because of high within-country variation.

Suggested Citation

  • Freund, Caroline & Rocha, Nadia, 2010. "What constrains Africa's exports?," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2010-07, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wtowps:ersd201007
    DOI: 10.30875/7fb65b46-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/57609/1/639993656.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.30875/7fb65b46-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2002. "Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1231-1294.
    2. Simeon Djankov & Caroline Freund & Cong S. Pham, 2010. "Trading on Time," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 166-173, February.
    3. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    4. Carolyn L. Evans & James Harrigan, 2005. "Distance, Time, and Specialization: Lean Retailing in General Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 292-313, March.
    5. Hummels, David, 2001. "Time As A Trade Barrier," Working papers 28701, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    6. John W. McArthur & Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2001. "Institutions and Geography: Comment on Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2000)," NBER Working Papers 8114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gamberoni, Elisa & Lanz, Rainer & Piermartini, Roberta, 2010. "Timeliness and contract enforceability in intermediate goods trade," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2010-14, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    2. Ola Olsson, 2005. "Geography and institutions: Plausible and implausible linkages," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 167-194, December.
    3. Theo S. Eicher & Andreas Leukert, 2009. "Institutions and Economic Performance: Endogeneity and Parameter Heterogeneity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(1), pages 197-219, February.
    4. Pedro Albarran & Raquel Carrasco & Adelheid Holl, 2013. "Domestic transport infrastructure and firms’ export market participation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 879-898, May.
    5. Cecília Hornok, 2011. "Need for Speed: Is Faster Trade in the EU Trade-Creating?," wiiw Working Papers 75, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    6. Mauricio Cárdenas, 2007. "Economic Growth in Colombia : a reversal of "fortune"?," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 25(53), pages 220-259, January.
    7. Stephen Knowles & P. Dorian Owen, 2010. "Which Institutions are Good for Your Health? The Deep Determinants of Comparative Cross-country Health Status," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 701-723.
    8. George Alessandria & Joseph P. Kaboski & Virgiliu Midrigan, 2010. "Inventories, Lumpy Trade, and Large Devaluations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2304-2339, December.
    9. Volpe Martincus, Christian & Carballo, Jerónimo & Graziano, Alejandro, 2015. "Customs," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 119-137.
    10. Capolupo, Rosa, 2009. "The New Growth Theories and Their Empirics after Twenty Years," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-72.
    11. Laura Alfaro & Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan & Vadym Volosovych, 2008. "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries? An Empirical Investigation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(2), pages 347-368, May.
    12. José Ansón & Jean‐François Arvis & Mauro Boffa & Matthias Helble & Ben Shepherd, 2020. "Time, uncertainty and trade flows," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(9), pages 2375-2392, September.
    13. Raphael A. Auer, 2013. "Geography, institutions, and the making of comparative development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 179-215, June.
    14. Shepherd, Ben, 2009. "Speed Money: Time, Corruption, and Trade," MPRA Paper 17337, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Thomas Orliac, 2012. "The economics of trade facilitation [L'économie de la facilitation des échanges]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03681980, HAL.
    16. Liu, Lan & Yue, Chengyan, 2013. "Investigating the impacts of time delays on trade," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 108-114.
    17. Bianka Dettmer & Andreas Freytag & Peter Draper, 2013. "Check-in, departure and arrival times: Air cargo in Southern Africa?," Jena Economics Research Papers 2013-018, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    18. Terra Lawson-Remer, 2011. "Security of Property Rights for Whom?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2011-083, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Carstensen, Kai & Gundlach, Erich, 2005. "The primacy of institutions reconsidered: The effects of malaria prevalence in the empirics of development," Kiel Working Papers 1210, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    20. Theo S. Eicher & David J. Kuenzel, 2019. "European influence and economic development," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 667-734, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    trade facilitation; export times; transit delays; gravity models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa

    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:zbw:wtowps:ersd201007. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wtoerch.html .

    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.