Technical Measures to Trade in Central America: Incidence, Price Effects, and Consumer Welfare

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Measuring Economic Integration in Developing Countries: The Case of Central America

“…In fact, it is common among academics and SICA officials to consider economic integration to be synonymous with commercial integration. One example is the work of Kelleher and Reyes (2014), which attempts to measure the magnitude of the effects of non-tariff barriers (NTB) on intraregional trade, finding that Central America has the lowest prevalence of non-tariff technical measures in the world, but at the same time, there are important differences within the region. For example, in 2014, about 48 percent of imports from El Salvador were subject to at least one non-tariff measure, while in Honduras, only 16 percent of imports were subject to non-tariff measures.…”

Trading Away from Conflict: Using Trade to Increase Resilience in Fragile States

“…10 These trade restrictive measures usually have a net welfare-reducing effect. Recent evidence from Africa shows that NTMs have increased poverty owing to higher domestic prices (Cadot and Gourdon 2012;Kelleher and Reyes 2014;Treichel et al 2012).…”