 Export Performance and Trade Facilitation Reform: Hard and Soft InfrastructureAlberto Portugal-Perez and John Wilson World Development, 2012, vol. 40, issue 7, 1295-1307 Abstract: We estimate the impact of aggregate indicators of “soft” and “hard” infrastructure on the export performance of developing countries. We derive four new indicators for more than 100 countries over the period 2004–07. Estimates show that trade facilitation reforms do improve the export performance of developing countries. This is particularly true with investment in physical infrastructure and regulatory reform to improve the business environment. The findings provide evidence that the marginal effect of the transport efficiency and business environment improvement on exports appears to be decreasing in per capita income. In contrast, the impact of physical infrastructure and information and communications technology on exports appears increasingly important the richer a country becomes. We also find statistical evidence on the complementarity between hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure, as captured by our indicators. Finally, drawing on estimates, we compute illustrative ad-valorem equivalents of improving each indicator halfway to the level of the top performer in the region. Keywords: export performance; trade facilitation; soft and hard infrastructure; gravity model; developing countries; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:40:y:2012:i:7:p:1295-1307 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.12.002 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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