The Impact of Trade Cost on Readymade Garment Export: The Case of Bangladesh

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to understand whether the trade cost influences the export of Readymade Garment (RMG) export of Bangladesh. Theoretically, with an increase in the volume of exported goods, the costs will also increase. Therefore, this study is to examine the impact of trade costs on the readymade garment export performance of Bangladesh for the period of 2007 -2015. This study applied two types of panel data models: pooled OLS model and the Poisson-Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimation procedure have been employed in the estimation. The main contribution of the paper compared to other studies on Bangladesh lies in its approach in addressing the impact of trade costs on exports and using PPML gravity equation estimation. The results of the study indicate that trade costs have a significant negative impact on exports of Bangladesh. The major findings show that trade cost has a negative and significant impact on Bangladesh's bilateral RMG export performance. This implies that the Bangladeshi government should work to reduce domestic trade costs in order to boost efficiency and sustainably promote RMG export.