IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/deveco/v61y2023i2p75-116.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hard and soft factors of trade facilitation and export diversification: Evidence for developing and the least developed countries

Author

Listed:
  • Zühal Kurul

Abstract

This study examines how developing and the least developed countries (LDCs) can foster export diversification by considering trade facilitation as an effective policy option. Unlike previous studies, this paper constructs composite indicators—namely, hard and soft factors of trade facilitation—to better clarify which trade facilitation aspect is a matter of priority. Also, it uses the number of products and markets based on Harmonized System (HS) six‐digit level as export diversification measures. Finally, it investigates the differentiated impacts of hard and soft factors on export diversification in the LDCs. For the period 2007–17 and 92 countries, the results reveal that border efficiency promotes variety in products and markets, and the availability and quality of infrastructure enhances variety in markets for the whole sample of countries. Moreover, strengthening the availability and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) plays a significant role in the LDCs' export diversification.

Suggested Citation

  • Zühal Kurul, 2023. "Hard and soft factors of trade facilitation and export diversification: Evidence for developing and the least developed countries," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 61(2), pages 75-116, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:deveco:v:61:y:2023:i:2:p:75-116
    DOI: 10.1111/deve.12349
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/deve.12349
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/deve.12349?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1707-1721, September.
    2. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    3. Anke E. Hoeffler, 2002. "The augmented Solow model and the African growth debate," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 64(2), pages 135-158, May.
    4. Daron Acemoglu, 2008. "Oligarchic Versus Democratic Societies," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 1-44, March.
    5. Acemoglu, Daron & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 1997. "Was Prometheus Unbound by Chance? Risk, Diversification, and Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(4), pages 709-751, August.
    6. Maria Persson, 2013. "Trade facilitation and the extensive margin," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(5), pages 658-693, August.
    7. Manuel R. Agosin & Roberto Alvarez & Claudio Bravo‐Ortega, 2012. "Determinants of Export Diversification Around the World: 1962–2000," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 295-315, March.
    8. Chaney, Thomas, 2016. "Liquidity constrained exporters," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 141-154.
    9. Richard Blundell & Stephen Bond, 2000. "GMM Estimation with persistent panel data: an application to production functions," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 321-340.
    10. Luisa Marti & Rosa Puertas & Leandro García, 2014. "Relevance of trade facilitation in emerging countries' exports," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 202-222, March.
    11. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    12. Karsten Mau, 2016. "Export diversification and income differences reconsidered: The extensive product margin in theory and application," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(2), pages 351-381, May.
    13. Dennis, Allen & Shepherd, Ben, 2007. "Trade costs, barriers to entry, and export diversification in developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4368, The World Bank.
    14. Heid, Benedikt & Langer, Julian & Larch, Mario, 2012. "Income and democracy: Evidence from system GMM estimates," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 166-169.
    15. Thomas Chaney, 2016. "Liquidity Constrained Exporters," SciencePo Working papers hal-03389283, HAL.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5g3sadr9h8gbri8hrtq0h6au2 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Shepherd, Ben & Wilson, John S., 2009. "Trade facilitation in ASEAN member countries: Measuring progress and assessing priorities," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 367-383, September.
    18. David Roodman, 2009. "A Note on the Theme of Too Many Instruments," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(1), pages 135-158, February.
    19. Robert C. Feenstra & Hong Ma, 2014. "Trade Facilitation and the Extensive Margin of Exports," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 65(2), pages 158-177, June.
    20. John S. Wilson & Catherine L. Mann & Tsunehiro Otsuki, 2005. "Assessing The Potential Benefit Of Trade Facilitation: A Global Perspective," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Philippa Dee & Michael Ferrantino (ed.), Quantitative Methods For Assessing The Effects Of Non-Tariff Measures And Trade Facilitation, chapter 8, pages 121-160, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    21. Talea Bernatzki & Matthias Busse & Ruth Hoekstra, 2022. "Promoting Rwanda’s business environment: Impact of reforms and drivers of change," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(2), March.
    22. Aleksandra Parteka & Massimo Tamberi, 2013. "What Determines Export Diversification in the Development Process? Empirical Assessment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(6), pages 807-826, June.
    23. Chahir Zaki, 2015. "How Does Trade Facilitation Affect International Trade?," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 27(1), pages 156-185, January.
    24. Portugal-Perez, Alberto & Wilson, John S., 2012. "Export Performance and Trade Facilitation Reform: Hard and Soft Infrastructure," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(7), pages 1295-1307.
    25. John S. Wilson & Catherine L. Mann & Tsunehiro Otsuki, 2005. "Assessing the Benefits of Trade Facilitation: A Global Perspective," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(6), pages 841-871, June.
    26. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6apm7lruv088iagm4rv2c33jtg is not listed on IDEAS
    27. Bernard Hoekman & Alessandro Nicita, 2010. "Assessing the Doha Round: Market access, transactions costs and aid for trade facilitation," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 65-79.
    28. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," SciencePo Working papers hal-03579844, HAL.
    29. Nickell, Stephen J, 1981. "Biases in Dynamic Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1417-1426, November.
    30. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1707-1721, September.
    31. Persson, Maria, 2008. "Trade Facilitation and the Extensive and Intensive Margins of Trade," Working Papers 2008:13, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    32. Tomasz Iwanow & Colin Kirkpatrick, 2007. "Trade facilitation, regulatory quality and export performance," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(6), pages 735-753.
    33. Manova, Kalina, 2008. "Credit constraints, equity market liberalizations and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 33-47, September.
    34. John S. Wilson & Catherine L. Mann & Tsunehiro Otsuki, 2003. "Trade Facilitation and Economic Development: A New Approach to Quantifying the Impact," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 17(3), pages 367-389, December.
    35. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    36. Daniel Sakyi & José Villaverde & Adolfo Maza & Isaac Bonuedi, 2017. "The Effects of Trade and Trade Facilitation on Economic Growth in Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 29(2), pages 350-361, June.
    37. Rahul Giri & Mr. Saad N Quayyum & Rujun Yin, 2019. "Understanding Export Diversification: Key Drivers and Policy Implications," IMF Working Papers 2019/105, International Monetary Fund.
    38. Jesus Felipe & Utsav Kumar, 2012. "The Role of Trade Facilitation in Central Asia," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(4), pages 5-20, July.
    39. Windmeijer, Frank, 2000. "Moment conditions for fixed effects count data models with endogenous regressors," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 21-24, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ari Van Assche, . "Why it is time for a “Global Value Chains for Least Developed Countries Initiative”," UNCTAD Transnational Corporations Journal, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

    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. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2020. "Aid for Trade, Export Product Diversification and Import Product Diversification," EconStor Preprints 223021, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm & Iyer, Harish, 2021. "Effect of Aid for Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows on the Utilization of Unilateral Trade Preferences offered by the QUAD countries," EconStor Preprints 238211, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    3. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2020. "Aid for Trade flows and Poverty Reduction in Recipient-Countries," EconStor Preprints 213807, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    4. Thomas Orliac, 2012. "The economics of trade facilitation [L'économie de la facilitation des échanges]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03681980, HAL.
    5. Yuanhong Hu & Min Jiang & Sheng Sun & Yixin Dai, 2022. "Does Trade Facilitation Promote Export Technological Sophistication? Evidence From the European Transition Countries," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, June.
    6. Mitik, Lulit & Decaluwé, Bernard, 2008. "The impact of trade on female labor and girls’ education in South Africa: a CGE analysis," Conference papers 331785, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    7. Lectard, Pauline & Rougier, Eric, 2018. "Can Developing Countries Gain from Defying Comparative Advantage? Distance to Comparative Advantage, Export Diversification and Sophistication, and the Dynamics of Specialization," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 90-110.
    8. Goya, Daniel, 2020. "The exchange rate and export variety: A cross-country analysis with long panel estimators," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 649-665.
    9. Persson, Maria, 2012. "From trade preferences to trade facilitation: Taking stock of the issues," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 6, pages 1-33.
    10. Ignacio del Rosal, 2019. "Export Diversification And Export Performance By Destination Country," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(1), pages 58-74, January.
    11. Mehmet Aldonat Beyzatlar & Hakan Yetkiner, 2017. "Convergence in transportation measures across the EU-15," Transportation, Springer, vol. 44(5), pages 927-940, September.
    12. Daniel Goya, 2014. "The Multiple Impacts of the Exchange Rate on Export Diversification," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1436, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    13. Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim & Kazeem Bello Ajide, 2022. "Trade facilitation and environmental quality: empirical evidence from some selected African countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 1282-1312, January.
    14. S K Gnangnon, 2023. "Effect of Aid for Trade on Financial Development," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 28(2), pages 1-38, September.
    15. Berk, Istemi & Kasman, Adnan & Kılınç, Dilara, 2020. "Towards a common renewable future: The System-GMM approach to assess the convergence in renewable energy consumption of EU countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    16. Cristiana Tudor, 2022. "The Nexus between Pollution and Obesity and the Magnifying Role of Media Consumption: International Evidence from GMM Systems Estimates," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-18, August.
    17. Alassane D. Yeo & Aimin Deng & Todine Y. Nadiedjoa, 2020. "Trade Facilitation Effects on International Trade: Evidence From Lower-Middle and Upper-Middle-Income Countries," International Journal of Financial Research, International Journal of Financial Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 11(5), pages 254-266, October.
    18. Davide Consoli & Francesco Vona & Francesco Rentocchini, 2016. "That was then, this is now: skills and routinization in the 2000s," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 25(5), pages 847-866.
    19. Bernard Hoekman, 2014. "The Bali Trade Facilitation Agreement and Rulemaking in the WTO: Milestone, Mistake or Mirage?," RSCAS Working Papers 2014/102, European University Institute.
    20. Monica Schuster & Miet Maertens, 2013. "8 Private Food Standards and Firm-Level Trade Effects: A Dynamic Analysis of the Peruvian Asparagus Export Sector," Frontiers of Economics and Globalization, in: Nontariff Measures with Market Imperfections: Trade and Welfare Implications, pages 187-213, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

    More about this item

    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:bla:deveco:v:61:y:2023:i:2:p:75-116. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/idegvjp.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.