Trade Restrictiveness Benchmarks

Benchmark measures of trade restrictiveness using the Trade Restrictiveness Index stand in sharp contrast to standard measures. For a 27 country sample, trade weighted average tariffs underestimate restrictiveness measured by the ‘uniform tariff equivalent’ (the inverse of the TRI minus one) by an average of 50%. For a 7 case sample of changes in trade policy, the TRI and changes in average tariffs are uncorrelated. These conclusions appear to be robust with respect to missing data problems and to elasticity of substitution variation, but may be sensitive to the assumptions used to treat NTBs.