The Impact of Trade Cost on Readymade Garment Export: The Case of Bangladesh

The main purpose of this study is to understand whether the trade cost influences the export of Readymade Garment (RMG) export of Bangladesh. Theoretically, with an increase in the volume of exported goods, the costs will also increase. Therefore, this study is to examine the impact of trade costs on the readymade garment export performance of Bangladesh for the period of 2007 -2015. This study applied two types of panel data models: pooled OLS model and the Poisson-Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimation procedure have been employed in the estimation. The main contribution of the paper compared to other studies on Bangladesh lies in its approach in addressing the impact of trade costs on exports and using PPML gravity equation estimation. The results of the study indicate that trade costs have a significant negative impact on exports of Bangladesh. The major findings show that trade cost has a negative and significant impact on Bangladesh's bilateral RMG export performance. This implies that the Bangladeshi government should work to reduce domestic trade costs in order to boost efficiency and sustainably promote RMG export.

Gravity and Heterogeneous Trade Cost Elasticities

How do trade costs affect international trade? This paper offers a new approach. We rely on a flexible gravity equation that predicts variable trade cost elasticities, both across and within country pairs. We apply this framework to popular trade cost variables such as currency unions, trade agreements, and WTO membership. While we estimate that these variables are associated with increased bilateral trade on average, we find substantial heterogeneity. Consistent with the predictions of our framework, trade cost effects are strong for ‘thin’ bilateral relationships characterised by small import shares, and weak or even zero for ‘thick’ relationships.

How Does China’s Economic Policy Uncertainty Affect the Sustainability of Its Net Grain Imports?

China is a considerable grain importer in the world. However, the sustainability of China’s grain imports has been greatly challenged by its increasing economic policy uncertainty (EPU). This paper constructs the indicators of economic and environmental sustainability of China’s net grain imports and analyzes the impact of its EPU index on these indicators with a Time-Varying Parameter Stochastic Volatility Vector Autoregression (TVP-SV-VAR) model to explore how China’s EPU affects the sustainability of its net grain imports. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) The sustainability of China’s net grain imports fluctuated from 2001 to 2019. (2) China’s EPU has a negative impact on the economic sustainability of its net grain imports. A higher EPU index leads to a lower net import potential ratio and higher trade cost. (3) China’s EPU has a significant negative impact on the environmental sustainability of its net grain imports. It has the greatest negative impact on virtual water imports and smaller impact on virtual land imports and embodied carbon emission. Therefore, China’s EPU affects the sustainability of its net grain imports negatively through its impact on its net grain import potential ratio, trade cost, and virtual land, virtual water, and embodied carbon emissions in net grain imports.

A Literature Review on the Location Determinants of FDI

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important force to promote economic growth and social development in both developed and developing countries, while the distribution of FDI in the world and within countries is extremely uneven. This paper systematically summarizes the main determinants that affect the location choice of FDI in recent theoretical and empirical studies, including institution and investment environment, trade cost and industrial agglomeration, market size and natural resource, cultural distance and social network. Based on the work of this paper, it is helpful to better understand the location preference of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in FDI activities, and provide a reference basis for the host country to attract investment and promote economic growth.

An Empirical Analysis of Policy Barriers Related to Trade Costs for Exporters

The trade costs imposed by numerous policy and non-policy barriers on exporters are still considered an impediment in their export growth rate. Thus, this paper aims to measure over-year trends in total trade costs and trends in trade costs related to policy barriers. Further, to find out which trade cost-policy barriers are high. The research found that total trade costs have a decreasing trend for the rest of the world while developing countries like Pakistan have the lowest rate of a declining trend. Trade cost estimates associated with tariff barriers show a declining trend, whereas trade costs related to non-tariff barriers are on the rise as compared to developed countries. The results further reveal that higher trade costs are among the major factors that have rendered especially developing countries’ exports uncompetitive in world markets.JEL codes: F1, F10, F13, F14