empirical analysis of costs and prices on these routes and to allow for direct comparisons with a recent Africa trucking survey (discussed and analyzed in Teravaninthorn and Raballand 2009). In addition, the survey included questions designed to elucidate market structure and firm behavior, as well as obstacles trucking firms face. To construct the survey population, the survey team first compiled a list of trucking companies for each of the six countries from listings provided by the main trucking associations in the region, as well as supplementary lists drawn from publically available documents (e.g., phone books), and a list of single-truck operators produced by traveling to truck parks and other locations such firms were likely to be found. The master lists were then filtered to include only firms which transported internationally-traded goods on routes to neighboring countries, routes to and from major international ports or airports, or routes to and from major border posts. The information obtained from the filtered master lists was used to compute the eligible population of firms from which the survey team drew a random sample. The eligible population identified through the listing process comprised 502 trucking companies and 192 mono-truck operators, is summarized in Table 5. (For more details, see Annex A.) Of these, approximately 254 firms were sampled which collectively operate over 3,400 vehicles on over 430 distinct origin-destination pairs.<sup>11</sup> The sampling strategy was designed to ensure adequate representation of both single (mono-) truck operators and trucking companies with more than one truck, and the target sample sizes were designed to produce 120 route observations per country on firms’ main routes. Although the survey targeted an even split of route-firm-level observations between companies and mono-truck operators, in practice there were insufficient mono-truck operators available to be surveyed, and the team increased the sample of companies with two or more trucks. The result is a slight under-representation of mono-truck operators relative to the others.<sup>12</sup> In addition, refusal rates were significant, and reluctance to answer questions about prices in particular was an issue.<sup>13</sup> Despite these issues, the sample represents a large share of the eligible population at approximately 37 percent, a factor which would mitigate any sample selection bias due to non-response.<sup>14</sup> The survey made no attempt to capture firms operating on smaller national routes connecting rural areas or secondary markets, and this study does not attempt to assess costs or pricing on such routes. Thus findings must be carefully interpreted to apply only to main routes for international trade.<sup>15</sup> In addition, this study cannot capture all issues that affect costs beyond trucking prices – including the role of insecurity, product depreciation or losses due to delays, port inefficiencies, or other important issues. Rather it is focused only on the issue of trucking sector prices and the inefficiencies which drive them.

> 11The final sample excludes trucking firms which are vertically integrated subsidiaries of other companies and serving on an own account basis, and extreme outliers were excluded from the analysis as well.

> 12Where relevant, we weight the data using the appropriate sample weights by country and mono-truck versus larger firms.

> 13Refusal rates in the final survey were not provided, but in the pilot phase were as high as 75 percent.

> 14As a fraction of total registered trucks in the region, the sample is much smaller; however, national fleet statistics are not differentiated by dedicated service providers and it is unclear to what extent registration statistics are updated.

15There are approximately 60 price observations for domestic city-pair routes (excluding Panama) in the sample, and average price unconditional on costs or other route characteristics is statistically significantly lower on these routes than other national routes. However, this is not consistently the case when accounting for all other covariates. Ultimately, there are not sufficient observations on these routes to obtain conclusive results.

8