Transparency in non-tariff measures: An international comparison

摘要

We construct an index of non-tariff measures (NTM) transparency based on notifications to the WTO under the sanitary and phytosanitary and technical barriers to trade agreements, the existence of a trade portal giving ready access to trade-relevant regulations, the existence of NTM data collected under the MAST classification, and the results of an experiment conducted between 2015 and 2016 where we asked for specific regulations concerning the import of a particular product on behalf of a private company. The resulting country ranking shows that OECD countries are, by and large, the most transparent, but also shows that ASEAN countries score well compared to other developing countries.