Part A: Investigate how open or how restrictive your country is with respect to international trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) maintains a database of country ''Tariff Profiles" at its web site:
Use this database to answer the following questions, which you can then incorporate into your Final Report:
1 What is the trade weighted average tariff for your country for its total imports, as well as for its agricultural and non-agricultural imports?
2 In which product categories does your country impose the highest average tariff? Are these the same product categories in which the country has a comparative advantage?
3 How high are the tariffs faced by your country when it tries to export its products to other countries?
4 To put things in perspective, it may sometimes be helpful to compare your country to others. Therefore, you should compare the degree of trade restrictiveness of your country as reflected in its tariff structure to that of the U.S. (as well as other countries that you might be interested in).
Briefly discuss what the implications are of your country's trade policy for managers at multinational companies (or other organizations), e.g., who are trying to export a product to this country.
Part B: Unfortunately, international trade policies (and hence trade outcomes) are sometimes affected by corruption in government. Therefore, it would be useful to gauge the degree of overall corruption in the government of the country you are analyzing. Transparency International. a German organization, publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) that ranks countries across the world according to the degree of perceived corruption among public officials. The value of the CPI in 2013 and 2012 can range from "0" (a completely corrupt environment) to "100" (a corruption-free political/economic environment). For previous years, the scale is from "0" to "10". The CPI rankings for 1995 - 2013 are detail. In addition, Transparency International publishes a Global Corruption Barometer (GCB), which tries to gauge the general public's views on, and experiences of, corruption through interviews of more than 100.000 people in over 100 countries.
1. Find the CPI for your country for the most recent 5 years.
Based on your country's CPI for recent years, as well as information from your country's GCB for 2013, briefly discuss what the implications are of your country's trade policy (and degree of perceived corruption) for managers at multinational companies (or other organizations), e.g. who are trying to export a product to this country.