Trade, Infrastructure and Transaction Costs: The Imperatives for Asian Economic Cooperation

Recent literature has emphasized the importance of transaction costs and infrastructure in explaining trade, access to markets, and regional cooperation under globalization. For most Asian countries, transaction costs are a greater barrier to trade integration than import tariffs. By estimating a structural model of economic geography using cross-country data on income, infrastructure, transaction costs and trade of selected Asian economies, this paper shows that the transaction costs is statistically significant and important determinant in explaining variation in trade in Asia.