Effective Trade Costs and the Current Account: An Empirical Analysis

A view receiving increased support is that the height of trade costs in prime export sectors has a strong effect on current account balances: countries specializing in sectors that face relatively high trade costs, such as services, tend to run current account deficits, and similarly, countries spec...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Boz, Emine
Other Authors: Li, Nan, Zhang, Hongrui
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2019
Series:IMF Working Papers
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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245 0 0 |a Effective Trade Costs and the Current Account: An Empirical Analysis  |c Emine Boz, Nan Li, Hongrui Zhang 
260 |a Washington, D.C.  |b International Monetary Fund  |c 2019 
300 |a 42 pages 
651 4 |a United States 
653 |a Balance of trade 
653 |a Tariffs 
653 |a Tariff 
653 |a International Trade Organizations 
653 |a Short-term Capital Movements 
653 |a Public finance & taxation 
653 |a Taxes 
653 |a Trade Policy 
653 |a Current Account Adjustment 
653 |a Trade balance 
653 |a Open Economy Macroeconomics 
653 |a Trade: General 
653 |a Exports and Imports 
653 |a International economics 
653 |a International trade 
653 |a Exports 
653 |a Comparative advantage 
653 |a Empirical Studies of Trade 
653 |a Taxation 
653 |a Imports 
653 |a Neoclassical Models of Trade 
700 1 |a Li, Nan 
700 1 |a Zhang, Hongrui 
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520 |a A view receiving increased support is that the height of trade costs in prime export sectors has a strong effect on current account balances: countries specializing in sectors that face relatively high trade costs, such as services, tend to run current account deficits, and similarly, countries specializing in low trade cost sectors, such as manufacturing, tend to run current account surpluses. To test this view, we first infer comparative advantages and trade costs, by sector, within a large sample of countries for the period 1970–2014. Then we construct effective trade costs—trade costs weighted by sectoral comparative advantage—to gauge the height of a country’s overall trade costs. Results reveal that, although higher effective exporting costs are associated with lower current account balances, their impact is quantitatively limited; furthermore, the effective costs of importing often have no statistically significant effect