Customs-Clearance Channels, Non-Tariff Measures, and Export Survival in Serbia

Overview & Synopsis

This note examines how the survival of Serbia’s export relationships and its association with non-tariff measures (NTMs) vary across inland customs offices, land border-crossing points, and river ports. Using annual product–partner country–customs clearance channel data for 2020–2024, we estimate discrete-time hazard models separately for each channel. The sample covers products exported in 2019 by firms that both imported and exported. Export relationships are most durable at land border-crossing points and least durable at inland customs offices. Serbia’s bilateral import-side NTM indicator is associated with a significantly higher probability of export exit in all three channels. Coverage raises the annual probability of exit by about 1.4 to 3.2 percentage points for the composite indicator, with the largest association at land border-crossing points; for sanitary and phytosanitary measures, the association is about 3 percentage points at both inland customs offices and land border-crossing points. An alternative indicator covering measures applied to all trading partners yields a statistically significant association only at river ports. These estimates capture conditional associations with the regulatory status of exported product–partner lines; they do not establish causality or measure individual firms’ exposure to regulated inputs. The findings support diagnostics of regulatory and logistics constraints tailored to each customs-clearance channel to inform trade-facilitation reforms.