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Abstract
This paper introduces a new measure of policies and regulations affecting the retailing industry. Our retail restrictiveness index addresses 13 categories of nontariff measures (NTMs), including market entry restrictions and operational regulations. We produce index scores for 75 countries. Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand are among the most restrictive retail markets as measured by our index, while the United States is one of the world’s most open. We use econometric “gravity” models to examine how restrictiveness affects sales of multinational retailers’ foreign affiliates, and find that high (restrictive) scores on our index are associated with decreased affiliate sales.