Economic Journal of Emerging Markets, 12. 2020, 67-79 Economic Journal of Emerging Markets Available at http://journal. id/index. php/jep Econ. Emerg. Mark. The impacts of liberalization and trade facilitation on economic performance, poverty and income inequality: An analytical study Sukoco1. Djoni Hartono2*. Arianto A. Patunru3 1 Ministry of Trade Republic of Indonesia. Jakarta. Indonesia 2 Department of Economics. Universitas Indonesia. Jakarta. Indonesia 3 Crawford School of Public Policy. Australian National University. Canberra. Australia * Corresponding author: djoni. hartono@ui. Article Info Abstract This study examines the impacts of import duty and trade transaction cost reductions on economic performance, poverty, and income distribution inequality, through the top-down computable general equilibrium approach. Findings/Originality: It reveals that reducing import duty in agricultural decreases urban poverty but increases the Keywords: poverty incidence at the rural and national levels. Reducing import duty Top-down. Computable General in agricultural industry lowers urban and national poverty without Equilibrium (CGE) model, trade affecting rural poverty. Meanwhile, the reductions of both import duty and transaction costs bring down the poverty incidence at all levels Ae urban, rural, and national. The inequality in rural and national income JEL Classification: distribution increased due to the cuttings of import duty in agricultural C68. F13. I32 and agricultural industry. However, it declined due to the reduction of DOI: 10. 20885/ejem. art6 transaction costs, and the combined transaction cost with import duty in agricultural or agricultural industry. Article history: Received : 14 November 2019 Accepted : 10 January 2020 Published : 8 April 2020 Introduction Since early 1980s. Indonesia has implemented internal measures to reform trade liberalization policies focusing on simplifying port and customs procedures, reducing import duty rates and other additional costs, simplifying import licenses and other non-tariff barriers, de-regulating import and distribution systems, de-regulating investment regimes, developing bonded zones and processing export shipments (Anas & Roesad, 2003. Erwidodo, 1. The main objective of the measures was improving the international competitiveness of domestic commodities. In supporting the outward-oriented economic policy strategy, the Indonesian government carried out some external measures, including participating actively in bilateral, regional and multilateral trade cooperation. Joining the cooperation schemes. Indonesia must comply with agreements emphasizing trade liberalization. The relationship between trade liberalization and economic in developing country has been an intensive controversial debate. The integration of developing countries into the global economy has strengthened negative sentiments especially in the developing world that "the poor have become poorer and the rich have become richer. " Many attributed this development to adverse effects of trade liberalization and globalization on the global economy in terms of increased poverty and income This negative sentiment was not totally baseless. Some empirical studies have supported it, suggesting negative effects of trade liberalization on the poor population based on partial balance analysis (Ravallion. Datt, & Walle, 1. or general equilibrium analysis (Lofgren, 2. In contrast, the pro-view on trade liberalization emphasizes the importance of trade openness to improve economic growth. Most researchers in this camp and the multilateral P ISSN 2086-3128 | E ISSN 2502-180X Copyright A 2020 Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License . ttp://creativecommons. org/licences/by-sa/4. Economic Journal of Emerging Markets, 12. 2020, 67-79 institutions, such as the World Bank. International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), believe that trade liberalization will accelerate growth and reduce poverty in developing countries. So far, only few studies have examined the relationship between liberalization and trade facilitation on the one hand and economic performance, poverty, and income distribution, on the other, that employed the computable general equilibrium (CGE) with the transmission that runs from macro level to micro level, in the context of Indonesia. Therefore, this study aims at filling in this gap. In doing so this study utilizes a more comprehensive computable general equilibrium (CGE) framework with a top-down model and relies on Indonesian data. Methods The analysis in this study applied a computable general equilibrium approach with a top-down model, following the model developed in Decaluwe. Lemelin. Maisonnave, and Robichaud . This model is a static model of a country where companies are assumed to operate in a perfectly competitive environment. Some changes were introduced to answer the research questions, including exogenizing trade transport costs, improved elasticity data from Indonesian case studies, and adjustment of closure in the model. The top-down model was intended to relate macro data transmission . hanges in prices of commodities and income of various household groups as a result of the CGE model simulatio. to microdata . ndividual household expenditures based on SUSENAS dat. to obtain new real expenditure data of individual households (Statistics Indonesia, 2008. The poverty and income distribution inequality were measured based on both initial and new real expenditure data of individual households. Poverty was analyzed using the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) approach, and income distribution was analyzed using the Gini coefficient. Data Sources The main data used in this study came from the 2008 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and the 2008 National Socio-Economic Survey (SUSENAS) (Statistics Indonesia, 2008a, 2008. The supporting data included: Input-Output Table of 175 sectors in 2005. Input-Output Table of 66 sectors in 2008 and a survey on Special Savings and Household Investments (SKTIR) in 2008 obtained from the publication of the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics, as well as the parameter data of estimated equation system obtained from previous studies deemed relevant (Statistics Indonesia, 2008d, 2008. Although some sectors and households were the focus of the research, they were not included in the SAM 105 in 2008 published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS). The disaggregation was done for the production sectors, domestic commodities, and import commodities, respectively, from 24 sectors to 46 sectors. Households were disaggregated from 8 household groups to 20 groups. Disaggregation and modification of the 2008 SAM structure of 105 sectors into the SAM structure of 183 sectors suited to the 1-1 CGE PEP model, version 2. ee Appendix . Poverty Analysis Method The formula for calculating poverty, according to Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) is as follows: ycOeyc yu ycEyu = ycu Ocycycn=1 [ yc ycn ] . where = weighting the depth of household poverty . , 1, . z = Poverty Line. yi = the average monthly per capita expenditure of population below the poverty line . = 1,2, . , . , yi