Extrait
International Transport Costs and the Margins of Intra-Latin American Maritime Trade
Introduction
How do international transport costs affect countries' ability to participate in the global economy and what impact do changes in the cost of trade have on a country's trade and real income? This paper is devoted to partially answer these questions. While the gains from trade are widely accepted, less is known about the magnitude of the penalty faced by countries for which trade is costly. Reducing trade costs has direct and indirect benefits; it promotes trade and also leads to industrial restructuration in the economy; higher specialisation, and changes in factor prices and real income. We focus on international maritime transport costs as a key component of trade costs. How do these effects operate, and how large might they be?The relationship between international trade and transport costs is usually estimated as part of a gravity model of trade, which relates bilateral trade flows to the income and population of trading partners and the geographical distance between them. Recent research has been concerned with the use of more accurate proxies for transport costs, like freight rates, infrastructure or customs procedures. In this line, Limao and Venables (2001) analyse empirically the dependency of trade a...Voir le contenu complet de ce document
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