Despite enormous academic interest in international trade costs and keen policy interest in efforts to mitigate them, so far there is very little hard evidence on the impacts of trade facilitation efforts. This paper exploits a dramatic reduction in the rate of physical inspections by Albanian...

The 2013 World Trade Organization ministerial in Bali produced a comprehensive framework agreement on trade facilitation. If fully implemented, the agreement should increase the speed and reduce the cost of moving goods across international borders. But which reforms are most likely to improve...

As part of their commitments under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade Facilitation, many developing countries are set to adopt risk management, a strategy for selecting import shipments for inspection. This paper formalizes key enforcement issues related to risk management. It...

Impact evaluations of trade facilitation reforms have almost exclusively focused on reforms by data-rich customs agencies. Other "technical" agencies also intervene in the logistics of international trade, and do so in ways that can cause significant interruptions in the flow of the imported...

Despite the importance of trade facilitation as an area of trade and development policy, there have been very few impact evaluations of specific trade facilitation reforms. This paper offers an evaluation of in-house clearance, a reform that allows qualified firms in Serbia to clear customs from...

International supply chains require the coordination of numerous activities across multiple countries and firms. This paper develops a theoretical model of supply chains in which the measure of tasks completed within a firm is determined by parameters that define transaction costs and the cost...

Freight forwarders play a key role in moving goods across international borders. They arrange transport, oversee customs clearance on behalf of their clients, and more generally troubleshoot issues that arise while goods are in transit. This paper reports the results from a survey of 153 freight...

The dynamism of air traffic markets in the Middle East obscures the persistence of restrictions on international competition. But how important are such restrictions for passenger traffic? This paper uses detailed data on worldwide passenger aviation to estimate the effect of air transport...

What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immediately preceding the filing of a petition for...