This paper proposes a new quantitative implementation of Balassa's idea that export composition and revealed comparative advantage inform the relationship between endowments in domestic factors of production and exports. It proposes that the export composition of countries is close to a...

A large proportion of the least developed countries are landlocked and their access to world markets depends on the availability of a trade corridor and transit systems. Based on empirical evidence from World Bank projects and assessments in Africa, Central Asia, and elsewhere, this paper...

This paper uses a theoretically grounded model of international trade to estimate the cross-border tradability of services. The resulting indices cover up to 99 countries and ten sectors. The results show that information and communications technology capital and legal institutions are...

The authors show in this paper that increasing the transparency of the trading environment can be an important complement to traditional liberalization of tariff and non-tariff barriers. Our definition of transparency is grounded in a transaction cost analysis. The authors focus on two...

The authors present a new database of minimum distance road routes connecting 138 cities in 27 countries across Europe and Central Asia. They use it to show that improved road network quality is robustly associated with higher intraregional trade flows. Gravity model simulations suggest that an...

This paper reviews recent progress and indicators of trade facilitation in member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The findings show that import and export costs vary considerably in the member countries, from very low to moderately high levels. Tariff and non-tariff...

The authors test the hypothesis that product standards harmonized to de facto international standards are less trade restrictive than ones that are not. To do this, the authors construct a new database of European Union (EU) product standards. The authors identify standards that are aligned with...

This paper finds that a 1 percent reduction in the cost of exporting or the cost of international transport is associated with an export diversification gain of 0.3 percent or 0.4 percent respectively. Lower domestic market entry costs can also promote diversification, but the elasticity is...

The authors use newly collected data on trade and production in 178 countries to infer estimates of trade costs in agriculture and manufactured goods for the 1995-2010 period. The data show that trade costs are strongly declining in per capita income. Moreover, the rate of change of trade costs...

This paper shows that networked trade in parts and components is more sensitive to the importing country's logistics performance than is trade in final goods. In the baseline specification, the difference between the two trade semi-elasticities is around 45 percent, which suggests that the...