The Effect of Institutions on Bilateral Trade of Selected Countries in the Middle East

Abstract

World trade has grown remarkably quickly in the past decades. Some researchers believe that despite growing trade, the rate of world trade is less potential amount that it can be achieved. From the perspective of these researchers, in addition to transportation costs and customary transaction costs, there are other intangible costs that reduce trade. Quality and efficiency of institutions are one of the factors that can affect the exchange costs. In this paper, we have studied the effect of institutions on trade flows of selected countries in the Middle East by using gravity model and panel data method between 2002 and 2008. The results show that compare to other factors on bilateral trade, the quality of institutions has more affect so that one unit increase in quality of institutions index in exporting and importing countries, would respectively induce 1/58 and 0/7 percent increase in trade between pairs of countries that we have studied. Therefore countries with better institutions are more willing to trade.

Keywords

• quality of institutions
• governance indicators
• gravity model
• panel data