Phouphet Kyophilavong suggested that the paper should provide more information on tariff barriers as a means of providing guidance about the tariff lines where policymakers should be encouraged to increase their tariff liberalization efforts. On the model side, Kyophilavong asked the authors explore the sensitivity of the results to changes in the Armington elasticity parameter, since the assumed trade-off between foreign and domestic varieties of goods may have a strong effect on the results. He also encouraged the authors to provide more discussion about the role of service and trade costs in the model as they may be different in size, and may have different effects on integration.
Zhichao Zhang asked why the coauthors decided to use a CGE model to examine their question. He suggested that the use of a QUEST model of estimation might be more appropriate for this examination, because the QUEST model would provide a better...