Logistics Costs and Competitiveness
Read this article. The document examines issues and costs related to domestic and international logistics. Sections 3 and 4 are most applicable here. What are the unique challenges facing domestic and global logistics?
Measuring International Logistics Costs
The gravity model is the workhorse of empirical international trade. Typically,
it is used to obtain econometric estimates of the sensitivity of trade flows with
respect to particular trade cost factors, and to run counterfactual simulations
based on those estimates. Novy turns the gravity model on its head to
develop a methodology for inferring trade costs based on the observed pattern
of trade and production. He starts from a variety of theory-based gravity
models, and uses simple algebra to derive a theory-consistent expression for
bilateral trade costs between two countries. His approach has been applied in a
number of recent papers, such as: Jacks et al. on trade costs over the
1870-2000 period; Shepherd, who uses the methodology to assess the
effectiveness of trade facilitation programs in APEC and ASEAN; Brooks and
Ferrarini on trade costs between India and China; Duval and Utoktham on trade costs in the Asia-Pacific; Miroudot et al. (2010) on trade costs
in international services markets; and Olper and Raimondi on trade
costs in food industries.
There are three main advantages to the Novy methodology. First, it is
"top down", in the sense that it provides an all-inclusive measure of trade
costs, covering all factors - even unobservables - affecting exports and
imports. Second, its data requirements are limited to the value of domestic
and international shipments, which can be approximated using commonly
available data from national accounts and standard trade databases. It is not
necessary to have policy data on the full range of trade costs in order to
properly account for them using this approach. Third, the methodology is
theory-based, and relies on an identity relationship rather than econometric
estimation. There is thus no risk of omitted variable bias, or other problems
that typically plague econometric estimates of gravity models.
Of course, the cost of relying heavily on theory is that if it is incorrect, then the
decomposition might also be erroneous. However, Novy (2010) shows that the
approach used here can be applied successfully to a variety of theoretical
models of trade; it obviously captures a deep regularity in the relationship
between trade costs, production, and trade flows. He also shows that it is
highly robust to the possibility of measurement error.
In ad valorem equivalent terms, Novy's measure takes the following
form:
where: is the geometric average of trade costs facing exports from
country i to country j and those facing exports from country j to country i; k and t index sectors and time periods respectively;
is the cost of shipping
goods from country i to country j relative to the cost of shipping them within
country i;
is the value of goods shipped within country i relative to the
value of those shipped from country i to country j; and s is a model parameter,
usually the elasticity of substitution among product varieties within a sector.
The basic interpretation of equation (1) is straightforward: as the ratio of
international trade relative to domestic shipments increases, trade
costs fall. In other words, trade costs must be lower when countries exhibit a
greater tendency to trade with each other rather than with themselves. The
precise relationship between trade costs and the ratio of trade to domestic
shipments depends on how substitutable the goods in question are: in more
homogeneous sectors, the effect on trade costs of a given change in the ratio
is dampened.
However, it is important to be clear on a number of other aspects of the
interpretation of . First, it represents average trade costs in both directions
between i and j. The structure of the model is such 38 that it is not possible to derive expressions for unidirectional trade costs in
terms of observables. From a policy perspective, it is therefore important to
interpret changes in cautiously: they might be caused by policy changes
in country i, in country j, or in both simultaneously.
Second, as the first part of equation (1) indicates, depends on the ratio of
international trade costs to domestic trade costs
. One aspect of this connection is that some kinds of "behind-the-border" trade costs
are effectively cancelled out in the final measure of average trade costs,
namely those that affect domestic and foreign producers in exactly the same
way. However, many behind-the-border measures discriminate in fact, if not in
law, in the sense that it is more costly for foreign producers to obtain
information on procedures, or navigate a path through domestic regulations
and institutions. These kinds of differences are captured in
. However,
when comparing trade costs across countries, it is impossible to separately
identify international versus domestic trade costs.
Third, is an all-inclusive measure of trade costs, in the sense that it takes
account of the full range of transaction costs affecting exports and imports. It
thus takes account of logistics performance. It is not a measure of protection,
like the World Bank's Trade Restrictiveness Indices. It takes account of tariff
and non-tariff barriers to trade, but also includes a wide range of other trade
cost factors typically captured in gravity models. Examples include
geographical distance, and cultural or historical links. As a result,
where is the relevant partial regression coefficient. Applying this approach
to the model for manufacturing (Table 5, column 1) shows that logistics
accounts for just over 15% of the observed variation in total trade costs.
Tariffs, by comparison, account for only 0.6% of the variation in trade costs,
but distance accounts for over one-third of the total. Although these are little
more than "back of the envelope" calculations, it is clear that as far as policy-
related impediments to trade are concerned, logistics is an issue of major
quantitative importance. This result lines up well with the existing literature,
which tends to suggest that the gains from reforming non-tariff measures -
and in particular trade facilitation and logistics - outweigh the gains from
comparable tariff reductions.
Clearly, it will be important for future research to expand the country sample
used for this analysis to include a broader range of countries. Inclusion of LPI
scores for 2007 and 2009 will make it possible to control for a range of country-
specific factors using fixed effects, thereby reducing the risk of omitted
variables bias. Nonetheless, it seems likely that the basic results presented
here will be confirmed, namely that logistics is a very important determinant
of bilateral trade costs, accounting for perhaps as much as 15% of the total.