Risk Management in Border Inspection

As part of their commitments under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade Facilitation, many developing countries are set to adopt risk management, a strategy for selecting import shipments for inspection. This paper formalizes key enforcement issues related to risk management. It ar...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hillberry, Russell
Other Authors: Karabay, Bilgehan, Tan, Shawn W.
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C The World Bank 2020
Series:World Bank E-Library Archive
Online Access:
Collection: World Bank E-Library Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:As part of their commitments under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade Facilitation, many developing countries are set to adopt risk management, a strategy for selecting import shipments for inspection. This paper formalizes key enforcement issues related to risk management. It argues that the complexities of international trade oversight mean that inspecting agencies lack certainty about the conditional probability that a given shipment will not comply with import regulations. Ambiguity of this sort is likely to be especially important in developing countries that lack the sophisticated information technology used in advanced risk management systems. This paper formalizes a role for ambiguity in a theoretical model of border inspection. It provides evidence suggesting that ambiguity affects inspection rates. Finally, the paper calibrates the model and shock the ambiguity parameters to illustrate the consequences of an information technology-driven improvement in risk management capabilities for equilibrium rates of search and compliance
Physical Description:42 pages