Mauro Boffa’s research while affiliated with the world bank and other places

The paper examines the impact of logistics inefficiencies on international e-commerce. By exploiting data from flight schedules and time stamps for tracked postal items, the study quantifies bilateral inefficiencies in logistics as the difference between flight times and the lapse of time postal items take from leaving the origin office of exchange until the destination office of exchange. Using information on bilateral postal tonnage as a proxy for international e-commerce, the paper finds that logistics inefficiencies act as supplementary trade costs. In particular, a 1% reduction of bilateral logistics inefficiencies is correlated with a 0.25% increase in bilateral mail flows. The frequency of departing flights is also estimated to matter just as much.KeywordsE-commerceInternational logisticsAir transportUniversal Postal UnionJEL classificationF14L87

Standard trade theory suggests that the profile of exporting firms is characterized by large firms which dominate domestic productivity distribution. Large manufacturing multinationals have increased their productivity by participating, creating and shaping global production networks. In recent decades, trade flows have become increasingly dominated by trade-in-tasks within global production networks. Given the importance of pro-competitive effects in establishing the gains from trade following trade liberalizations, it is important to look at the link between participation in global value chains and a firm’s competitiveness. The paper does so by using the International Trade Centre’s competitiveness index, for small, medium-sized and large firms, coupled with global value chain participation measures extracted from multi-regional input-output tables, and together forming a panel dataset at country and firm category level. The main finding establishes that the gains from integration into value chains are greater for small firms than for large firms. In particular, at the sample median, an increase of participation by 2.5% reduces the competitiveness gap between small and large firms by 1.25%. In addition, the analysis suggests that it is the use of foreign inputs that drives the result. In contrast, the domestic value in intermediate goods matters only in cases where value chains respond to domestic demand needs. The identification strategy relies on a fractional probit model allowing for unobserved effects, and a causal framework using the depth of trade agreements as instrument, in order to mitigate potential reverse causality.

This paper quantifies the impact of international transport time on bilateral trade flows in goods using previously unexploited information drawn from a large data set on international parcel delivery times. In line with previous work, we find that an extra day spent in international transit reduces bilateral trade by just under 1% at the sample median. In addition, and for the first time in the literature, we examine the impact of time‐related uncertainty, which requires traders to hold costly inventories or build costly redundancies into supply chains. We find that a one day increase in international transport time uncertainty reduces bilateral trade flows by just over 1%. Splitting the sample into developing and developed countries shows that international transit time matters primarily for south–south trade, whereas uncertainty is relatively more important for north–north trade. Using new data on trade in intermediate versus final goods, we also find some evidence that time and uncertainty both matter more for movements of intermediates of the type that takes place within global value chains.

In today’s internet markets consumers can search for, find and compare prices worldwide. Online, information circulates faster than offline and arbitrage opportunities such as the ones arising from currency shocks are easily unveiled. In this paper, we estimate for the first‐time exchange rate elasticities for cross‐border e‐commerce transactions. Exploiting a new high‐frequency database on international transactions of parcels, we find that a 1% appreciation of the domestic currency increases e‐commerce imports by 0.7%. Comparing the result with traditional estimates in offline markets, this implies a 50% exchange rate pass‐through online.

With the help of a political economy model, we show that the extent of ‘trade policy substitution’—namely, substitution of tariffs with non-tariff measures (NTMs)—depends on the cost differential between domestic and foreign firms in complying with product standards. The model suggests the prevalence of trade policy substitution in developed economies, where the costs of compliance are relatively low. We test and validate this prediction using a database on NTMs that identifies actual trade restrictions. We further examine the possible protectionist use of trade policy substitution exploiting information on the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) and on WTO notifications.

The paper investigates two policies geared toward stimulating and shaping Global Value Chains (GVCs), namely Deep Regional Trade Agreements (DRTAs) and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). In an augmented gravity model, we test the impact of both policies on a variety of trade in value added indicators. We find that both policies are likely to increase GVC trade, although their transmission channels differ. While backward linkages are stimulated through both BITs and DRTAs, forward linkages respond only to DRTAs. The estimates suggest that negotiating a DRTA with investment provisions has a higher impact on trade in value added than signing a shallow RTA and a separate BIT. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/30246