Wen-jen Hsieh: This paper is an interesting study of non-tariff measures (NTMs), and it provides a broad overview on the topic with the aim of providing a practical way forward for the improvement of NTMs in ASEAN. The authors deal with myriad approaches. First, they provide an introduction to the definition, justification, and specificities of NTMs, as differentiated from tariff and non-tariff barriers (the latter being a subset of NTMs), which, unlike NTMs, have a protectionist purpose.
The article then discusses the difficulties in generating and obtaining data about NTMs and the present efforts by supranational institutions to generate official, objective data at national level.
The next section uses available data to provide an overview of NTM coverage worldwide, and this provides some interesting, counterintuitive features—namely, that NTMs are more widely used in developing countries where the capacity to implement them is more limited. An empirical model is then developed...