LAUSR

Abstract This paper assesses the role played by customs processes focused on goods for immediate release in facilitating trade flows, and the way in which international express delivery by air acts as a channel to transmit this effect. We use a “gravity” model to show that improvements in measures contained in the Global Express Association's Customs Capability Database can significantly increase trade flows: introducing a single measure could facilitate a 5% increase in trade flows. Roughly half this effect is transmitted through the channel of international express delivery by air, because express delivery acts as facilitator of wider trade. The effect is likened to the impact of the telegraph on transatlantic shipping in the 19th Century.