Trade facilitation policy focuses on accelerated and transparent shipment processing to reduce trade costs. A common measure to evaluate processing frictions is the time it takes to import. In this paper we translate import processing times to costs. Our theory considers that shipment processing...

We estimate import processing costs based on the time it takes to import. Our theory extends existing time-cost measures to account for uncertainty in import processing. We use detailed, highly disaggregated data on import processing dates and import values to provide evidence for our theory and...