Working Papers, Department of Economics, Lund University
No 2010:7:
Completing the EU Customs Union. The Effects of Trade Procedure Harmonization
Yves Bourdet ()
and Maria Persson ()
Abstract: A main component of customs unions is a common trade
policy on imports from non-member countries. Trade policy covers both
tariff and non-tariff barriers like trade procedures. We argue that since
trade procedures vary markedly across EU countries, the EU is not, strictly
speaking, a customs union. To illustrate this, we estimate the impact of
trade procedures on exports from non-EU countries and find a highly
statistically significant and negative effect. Simulating what the effects
would be of harmonizing trade procedures, i.e. to actually complete the EU
customs union, we find that aggregated exports to the EU would increase by
20 percent for the average exporter.
Keywords: Customs Union; European Union; Time Delays; Trade Facilitation; Trade Procedures; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: C23; F15; O24; (follow links to similar papers)
17 pages, June 24, 2010
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- This paper is forthcoming as:
-
Bourdet, Yves and Maria Persson, 'Completing the EU Customs Union. The Effects of Trade Procedure Harmonization', JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies.
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