Quantifying nontariff barriers in Ukraine: a comprehensive trade cost approach

Abstract

Great strides have been made recently in the theoretical approach to quantifying nontariff barriers. Modifying an approach proposed by Novy (2013), this article attempts to understand the extent of nontariff barriers between Ukraine and its major trading partners in goods by fashioning a new approach to trade in services as well. I provide the first comprehensive estimates of ad valorem equivalents of the nontariff measures that exist in Ukraine.

Keywords:

• Nontariff barriers
• ad valorem equivalent
• trade cost approach
• Ukraine

JEL Classification:

• F10
• F13
• F14
• F15

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Achim Voigt and Koen Berden for their intellectual support and the editor and anonymous referee for their comments.

Notes

¹ The missing countries are Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Estonia, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia.

² The only sector that this did not work for was communications, which had no weighting that could be obtained: the original weighting estimated by Jaffari and Tarr was based on country-specific information that is not available for the EFTA countries.

³ Similarly, the ECU number was taken from the average of Belarus and Kazakhstan in the Looi Kee, Nicita, and Olarreaga (2009) paper as data for Armenia and Tajikistan was not available. Finally, restrictiveness for the rest of the world relied on the 0.4238 elasticity of Fillat-Castejón, François, and Woerz (2008).

⁴ The EU grouping for 2010 and 2011 does not include Croatia, as membership was not imminent.

Additional information

Funding

The author acknowledges partial funding for this effort from the European Commission’s Directorate General for Trade.