TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cudmore, Edgar
AU  - Whalley, John
TI  - Border Delays and Trade Liberalization
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9485
PY  - 2003
Y2  - February 2003
DO  - 10.3386/w9485
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9485
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9485.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edgar Cudmore
The University of Western Ontario
Department of Economics
London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2
E-Mail: elcudmor@uwo.ca

John Whalley
Department of Economics
Social Science Centre
Western University
London, ON N6A 5C2
CANADA
Tel: 519/661-3509
Fax: 519/661-3666
E-Mail: jwhalley@uwo.ca
M1  - published as Edgar Cudmore, John Whalley. "Border Delays and Trade Liberalization," in Takatoshi Ito and Andrew K. Rose, editors, "International Trade in East Asia" University of Chicago Press (2005)

AB  - Delays at the border for customs clearance are seemingly a central feature of the trade regime in the CIS states. Here, we argue that with queuing costs being endogenously determined in such circumstances tariff liberalization (even in the small economy case) can be welfare worsening since tariff revenues are replaced by resource using queuing costs. On the other hand, corruption can be welfare improving if queuing costs are replaced by resource transferring bribes. We also show how added distortions between perishable and non-perishable, or between light and heavy goods can also arise. We show these outcomes using a simple general equilibrium model, and explore the numerical implications using Russian data. The orders of magnitude are both significant and opposite in sign to conventional analyses.
ER  -