What Constrains Africa’s Exports?

Africa's share of global exports has dropped by 50 percent over the last three decades. To stem this decline, aid for trade to the region has increased rapidly in recent years. Assistance can target improvements in three important components of trade facilitation: transit times, documentation,...

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Main Authors:	Freund, Caroline, Rocha, Nadia
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	World Bank 2013
Subjects:	congestion crossing freight inspection port authorities road road conditions road quality roads route safety traffic transit transport transportation travel distance travel distances travel time travel times vehicles
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13479

id	okr-10986-13479
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-134792021-04-23T14:03:08Z What Constrains Africa’s Exports? Freund, Caroline Rocha, Nadia congestion crossing freight inspection port authorities road road conditions road quality roads route safety traffic transit transport transportation travel distance travel distances travel time travel times vehicles Africa's share of global exports has dropped by 50 percent over the last three decades. To stem this decline, aid for trade to the region has increased rapidly in recent years. Assistance can target improvements in three important components of trade facilitation: transit times, documentation, and ports and customs. Of these, transit delays have the most economically and statistically significant effect on exports. Specifically, a one day reduction in inland travel times leads to a 7 percent increase in exports, after controlling for the standard determinants of trade and potential endogeneity. Put another way, a one day reduction in inland travel times translates into a 2 percentage point decrease in all importing-country tariffs. By contrast, longer delays in the other areas have a far smaller impact on trade. Large transit delays are relatively more harmful because they are associated with high (within-country) variation, making delivery targets difficult to meet. Finally, the results imply that transit times are primarily about institutional features—such as border delays, road quality, fleet class and competition and security—and not geography. 2013-05-21T13:35:09Z 2013-05-21T13:35:09Z 2011-10-18 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X doi:10.1093/wber/lhr016 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13479 en_US World Bank Economic Review;25(3) CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank Journal Article Africa
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	congestion crossing freight inspection port authorities road road conditions road quality roads route safety traffic transit transport transportation travel distance travel distances travel time travel times vehicles
spellingShingle	congestion crossing freight inspection port authorities road road conditions road quality roads route safety traffic transit transport transportation travel distance travel distances travel time travel times vehicles Freund, Caroline Rocha, Nadia What Constrains Africa’s Exports?
geographic_facet	Africa
relation	World Bank Economic Review;25(3)
description	Africa's share of global exports has dropped by 50 percent over the last three decades. To stem this decline, aid for trade to the region has increased rapidly in recent years. Assistance can target improvements in three important components of trade facilitation: transit times, documentation, and ports and customs. Of these, transit delays have the most economically and statistically significant effect on exports. Specifically, a one day reduction in inland travel times leads to a 7 percent increase in exports, after controlling for the standard determinants of trade and potential endogeneity. Put another way, a one day reduction in inland travel times translates into a 2 percentage point decrease in all importing-country tariffs. By contrast, longer delays in the other areas have a far smaller impact on trade. Large transit delays are relatively more harmful because they are associated with high (within-country) variation, making delivery targets difficult to meet. Finally, the results imply that transit times are primarily about institutional features—such as border delays, road quality, fleet class and competition and security—and not geography.
format	Journal Article
author	Freund, Caroline Rocha, Nadia
author_facet	Freund, Caroline Rocha, Nadia
author_sort	Freund, Caroline
title	What Constrains Africa’s Exports?
title_short	What Constrains Africa’s Exports?
title_full	What Constrains Africa’s Exports?
title_fullStr	What Constrains Africa’s Exports?
title_full_unstemmed	What Constrains Africa’s Exports?
title_sort	what constrains africa’s exports?
publisher	World Bank
publishDate	2013
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13479
_version_	1764423591718289408

What Constrains Africa’s Exports?

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