Determining the country-specific, regulation-specific effects of non-tariff measures on Intra-ASEAN exports in the priority sectors for integration

Aside from contributing to the sparse literature on the linkages between Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) and trade, this paper aims to provide a nuanced analysis of how the presence of NTMs affectsintra-ASEAN exports of products from the nine (9) priority sectors in 2012-2016. The study uses Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood regression to estimate gravity models which include regulation-specific and exporter-importer pair specific components. While evidence of tradeenhancing effects has been found for each of the NTM types included in the study, the presence of most of these regulations still tend to reduce rather than facilitate trade at the sectoral and overall levels. SPS measures are likely to act as barriers to trade in the agricultural and agriculture-adjacent sectors. Pre-Shipment Inspections, Quantity Control Measures and Price Control Measures are likely to reduce trade at the overall level, but their impacts depending on the sector and the trading partners involved. Interestingly, the trade-enhancing effects of Technical Barriers to Trade hold at the overall level and across most sectors and for 92% of the exporter-importer pairs; thus, the presence of TBTs is likely to enhance not only the value of trade but also the quality of traded goods. Export-oriented measures are similarly trade-enhancing in the event that they are significant