effectiveness of export promotion agencies (EPAs) based on a rich survey of EPAs across 88 developed and developing countries. The goals of EPAs are to help exporters understand and find markets for their products and services and can be divided into four categories: (a) country image building (advertising, promotional events, but also advocacy); (b) export support services (exporter training, technical assistance, capacity building, including regulatory compliance, information on trade finance, logistics, customs, packaging, pricing); (c) marketing (trade fairs, exporter and importer missions, follow-up services offered by representatives abroad); and (d) market research and publications (general, sector, and firm-level information, such as market surveys, on-line information on export markets, publications encouraging firms to export, importer and exporter contact databases) (Lederman et al. [2010], pp. 257–258). For 21 of the 73 developing countries surveyed, the authors find that EPAs receive budgetary support from multilateral donors such as the World Bank. The authors estimate the effect of EPAs’ expenditures per capita on overall exports per capita at the country level, accounting for selection bias in survey responses and for potential reverse causality. Their main conclusion is that, on average, EPAs have a significant positive effect on exports. Their estimates also point to the importance of EPAs’ services for overcoming foreign trade barriers and solving asymmetric information problems associated with exports of differentiated goods. In addition, they find evidence of strong diminishing returns, suggesting that small is beautiful as far as EPAs are concerned. However, the authors acknowledge that cross-country regressions cannot fully capture the heterogeneity of policy environments and institutional structures in which EPAs operate; hence, more detailed studies or project-type analyses are needed to provide specific policy advice.

On trade facilitation, Helble, Mann, and Wilson (2009) examine the responsiveness of trade flows to various types of aid for trade — linked to reform of trade policy and regulation, trade development (productive capacity building), and economic infrastructure — using a gravity equation framework covering 167 importers (reporters) and 172 exporters (partners) during the 1990–2005 period. Their results indicate that relatively small amounts of aid targeted at trade policy and regulatory reform have a greater impact with respect to increased trade flows than aid for broad trade development assistance or infrastructure. Several recent papers point to the importance of internal barriers related to infrastructure and institutions — including logistics performance — as obstacles to developing countries’ ability to trade and the volume of trade (e.g., Djankov, Freund, and Pham, 2010; Francois and Manchin, 2007; Freund and Rocha, 2011; Hoekman and Nicita, 2008; Portugal-Perez and Wilson, 2010). More specific studies highlight the importance of reducing marketing, transport, and other intermediary costs in agricultural supply chains (Balat, Brambilla, and Porto, 2009; Diop, Brenton, and Asarkaya, 2005). Although 11