Measuring Trade Costs and Gains from Trade Facilitation in the Philippines

Ramon Clarete
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Ramon Clarete: School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman

No 201706, UP School of Economics Discussion Papers from University of the Philippines School of Economics

Abstract: This paper provides estimates of trade costs of the Philippines with her key trading partners, and develops a framework for assessing their welfare cost. With tariff restrictions reduced significantly following several rounds of multilateral and regional trade negotiations, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) have emerged as key in slowing down trade flows. Given the proliferation of NTMs in the world today, chances are some of those are disguised NTBs. More importantly however, the inefficiencies associated with implementing legitimate NTMs such as the SPS on agricultural imports become unnecessary barriers to trade. This is the fat in trade costs that need to be eliminated through trade facilitation, while policy reforms would have to deal with redundant NTMs, whose claim to resources adds to the cost imposed by inefficient implementation of legitimate NTMs. This paper came up with a CGE model analytical structure for assessing the gains of lowering trade costs.

Keywords: Trade costs; Economic development; Trade policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 O24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-sea
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Published as UPSE Discussion Paper No. 2017-06, September 2017

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:phs:dpaper:201706

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