Intraregional Trade Costs in Asia: A Primer

While much has been said about the need to promote intraregional trade and the importance of reducing associated trade costs, quantitative estimates of such costs have been lacking. In this paper a new comprehensive measure of international trade costs is applied to calculate, according to value, trade costs within and between four Asian subregions, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Extraregional trade costs of the four subregions with free trade areas outside Asia, such as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU), as well as their trade costs with China, India and Japan are also calculated. The analysis concludes with an evaluation of the importance of tariffs in overall trade costs and with the identification of sharp differences across Asian subregions.