Essays on Non-Tariff Measures and Overall Protection in OIC Member Countries

This thesis focuses on the non-tariff measures (NTMs) in goods and services sectors among the Organization of Islamic Council (OIC) member countries. The thesis includes two main essays: the first essay discusses the NTMs in goods, while the second essay quantifies NTMs in services. The first essay comprises two chapters reported as chapters five and six of the thesis. Chapter five studies the incidence and price-raising effect of NTMs across different sectors in OIC members in general. Using the available information on tariff equivalent of NTMs (AVEs) at detailed product level, the essay sheds light on the declining tariffs and the dominant role of NTMs in contributing to the overall trade protection of OIC. Chapter six focuses on Pakistan as a case study. The chapter includes a discussion on the history of trade liberalization and the increasing use of import related NTMs across the sectors. This essay concludes with the rise of NTMs in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors and the subsequent impact it droves on the domestic prices. After concluding the discussion on NTMs in goods, we realized that the regulations in services sectors are also vital to study, as services represent 64 percent of global trade in terms of value-added as of 2020, playing a crucial role in merchandise trade. Motivated by the findings of the first essay, the second essay discusses the price- raising effect of services regulations. It includes estimation of AVEs in 19 services sectors for 121 countries using bilateral trade data in services in structural gravity modeling with PPML estimation. The results show that developing countries, including some OIC members are more restrictive. Furthermore, chapter four provides the Islamic perspective of trade and its linkage with the NTMs which is relevant in the context of OIC. Finally, based on the findings, the thesis has come up with important policy recommendations. The analysis recommends that streamlining NTMs and harmonizing with trading partners will ease the inflationary pressure in developing countries.