No abstract

This paper analyzes how trade costs affect exports from five Central Asian countries. It highlights how improving logistics and procedures and boosting digitalization can streamline regional trade. The paper estimates how the time needed to export goods, the monetary cost of doing so, and uncertain time frames impact exports from Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It finds that the uncertainty and the high monetary costs traders face hold back exports from the five countries, along with remoteness from ports and global markets.

This paper estimates the level of Central Asian countries’ participation in regional value chains (RVCs) and global value chains (GVCs) using data from the Eora multi-region input-output table.  The contribution of foreign value-added to gross exports is low both absolutely and compared to baseline estimates for Southeast Asia.  Moreover, despite their geographic, cultural, and historic closeness, Central Asian countries tend to be more integrated into GVCs, whereas RVCs are at a rudimentary stage.  The high trade costs and uncertain trading environment at border-crossing points are among the reasons for underdeveloped RVCs in Central Asia.

This study uses gravity models to explain bilateral patterns of global wine trade since 1962. This is, to our knowledge, the first study on global wine trade covering the second wave of globalization as a whole. The results suggest that the impact of distance, common language, and common colonizer post-1945 on wine trade was lower in the 1991–2019 period than in the 1962–1990 period. We also use gravity models to explain the impact on bilateral wine trade patterns of similarities across countries in the mix of winegrape varieties in their vineyards. Although our models do not allow us to identify causality, the results suggest that countries trade more wine with each other the closer their mix of winegrape varieties.