Trade costs and nontariff barriers are at the forefront of discussions on competitiveness and expanding trade opportunities for developing countries. This paper provides a summary overview of data and indicators relevant to these issues and has been informed by work underway at the World Bank on...

This paper briefly reviews new indices of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have been developed at the World Bank. The paper also compares the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions applied at the border with the effects of domestic policies that affect trade...

This paper empirically examines how standards and technical regulations affect export margins in three African countries at the firm level. The approach involves combining detailed customs transaction data at the firm-product level with bilateral information on non-tariff measures within a...

With the success of the World Trade Organization and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in reducing conventional tariff barriers, much of the recent focus of regional and multilateral trade agreements has switched to non-tariff measures, both border and...

The paper estimates the effect of product standards on firms’ export decisions using two novel datasets. The first covers all exporting firms in 42 developing countries. The second covers pesticide standards for 243 agricultural and food products in 63 importing countries over 2006–12. The...

The short-term impact of Brexit on goods exports is assessed using the Overall Trade Restrictiveness Index of the United Kingdom's major trading partners. The analysis shows that in the short run, leaving the European Union may cause the United Kingdom's exports to the European Union to decrease...

Recent years have seen a surge in economic integration agreements (EIAs) and the development of non-tariff measures (NTMs). As a consequence, a growing number of EIAs include provisions on NTMs. However, little attention has been given in the literature to the effects of NTM liberalization in...

Despite the widespread tariff reductions sparked by the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement, borders in the region remain thick, with many hurdles standing in the way of regional trade. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that nontariff measures raise trade costs and inhibit...

There is substantial evidence that with the progressive global decline in tariffs over several decades, trade costs are a more significant barrier to trade than tariffs, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper decomposes trade costs into three categories: costs that can be lowered by trade...