This paper measures the impact of low-cost transport by rail in Malawi on the dispersion of agricultural commodities prices across markets by exploiting the quasi-experimental design of the nearly total collapse of domestic transport by rail in January 2003 due to the destruction of a railway bridge at Rivirivi, Balaka.
... See More + Estimations are based on monthly market prices of four agricultural commodities (maize, groundnuts, rice, and beans) in 27 local markets for the period 1998–2006. Market pairs connected by rail when the railway line was operational are intervention observations. Railway transport services explain a 14 percent to 17 percent reduction in price dispersion across markets. Geographical reach of trade varies by crop, most likely related to storability and geographical spread of production. Perishability appears to increase impact reflecting limited scope for arbitrage. Overall, impacts are remarkably similar in size across commodities.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8132 JUN 29, 2017
Services play a role in global value chains in many ways, similar to goods. But services deserve special attention because of how they are transacted, how they affect downstream sectors, how they are regulated, and how international cooperation can contribute to integrating national markets.
... See More + Databases on trade in value added, which cover only cross-border transactions in services, reveal a high and growing share of services in trade in value added across countries and industries. Although international transactions in services that take place through foreign investment are difficult to measure, their economic impact can be estimated. The resulting improved access to financial, communications, and transport services facilitates the emergence of global value chains, enhances downstream manufacturing firms’ productivity, and shifts the pattern of comparative advantage toward sectors intensive in these services. Despite significant unilateral liberalization, service markets in many countries remain protected by restrictions on the entry of foreign services and service providers, as well as discretionary and discriminatory regulatory requirements. International cooperation in services has attempted to follow the example of reciprocal market opening for goods, but this approach has delivered little incremental liberalization. More could be achieved through greater emphasis on international regulatory cooperation.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8126 JUN 27, 2017
This paper builds on recent research examining the impact of finance on economic outcomes. Specifically, it asks whether credit extended to households and firms has an impact on the share of exports in gross domestic product and on the trade balance.
... See More + The analysis finds that although household credit is not positively related to export shares or trade balances, firm credit is significantly related to both. The relationship with export shares is particularly strong and robust. Higher shares of credit going to firms means a higher export share in gross domestic product and stronger trade balances (any effect of credit on imports is subsumed by the larger effect on exports). Household credit has a negative or insignificant relationship with the trade balance and the share of exports in gross domestic product. Credit may also affect the choice between types of goods produced domestically, not just whether they are produced for export or domestic consumption. The paper finds that household credit has a negative relationship with the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product. Firm credit is positively associated with the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product, while the share of services does not seem to be affected by either.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8082 JUN 01, 2017
This paper uses the 2011 Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey to analyze the relationship between participation in the garment industry and household welfare.
... See More + The analysis relies on propensity score matching estimators to investigate whether households that have at least one member employed in the textile and apparel sector are better off than those who do not participate in the garment industry, in terms of several monetary and non-monetary welfare indicators. The findings show that garment households are less likely to experience self-reported food insufficiency, and their children are more likely to be enrolled in school. Yet, the positive effect of the treatment is restricted to the bottom 40 percent of the consumption distribution, possibly due to the nature of garment jobs, and the fact that they represent an attractive alternative for the poorest households but not necessarily for the better-off. Using instrumental-variables, the analysis also shows that remittances originating from the textile and apparel sector relax household budget constraints, increasing expenditures in education, health, and investments in agricultural activities.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8061 MAY 16, 2017
This Investment Policy and Promotion Report has been prepared by the Investment Policy and Promotion team of the World Bank Group’s Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice.
... See More + The report aims to serve as a guide to governments to set priorities and policies leading to concrete and measurable results in FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) attraction, retention and benefits to the local economy. These are key elements in any government’s agenda seeking to leverage FDI for creating jobs, increasing the competitiveness of the economy and contributing to sustainable growth.
See Less -
Ratings for the Trade Development Support Program Project for Cambodia were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, risk to development outcome was moderate, Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and Grantee performance was moderately satisfactory.
... See More + Some lessons learned included: supporting a sector-wide approach (SWAp) can yield benefits to promote integrated policy-making, notably in trade policy, but the underlying institutional framework needs to be solid. Adopting a programmatic approach should not come at the expense of selectivity and prioritization of activities for support. To improve the trade environment, combining activities that yield short and medium-term results and activities with direct and indirect impacts is a favorable option. Developing institutional capacity takes time and is a challenging task, but is a worthy objective in low-capacity environments, such as Cambodia.
See Less -
Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR1262 MAY 03, 2017
Kazakhstan is facing its greatest economic challenge since the global crisis. With oil prices at US$50 per barrel, the country urgently needs to adjust its economic model and find new sources of economic growth.
... See More + Kazakhstan main export has been crude oil, considered a low-complexity mineral products, which has made the country extremely vulnerable to shocks. For Kazakhstan to reach high income status it will need to move up the value chain and find new sources of growth. However, new opportunities are arising. China's new Silk Road initiative, renewed regional integration efforts through the Eurasian Economic Union, CAREC and WTO accession are opening up new prospects for Kazakhstan to integrate more successfully with the region and the world and to position itself as a key trade and transit corridor between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. While Kazakhstan outperforms its regional peers in terms of overall business environment, it still ranks poorly in trading across borders. Kazakhstan is embarking on an economic transformation at a time where new global trends are reshaping economic fundamentals. As countries in Asia and Europe enhance their living standards, opportunity costs will matter more than direct transport costs, resulting in increasing opportunities to transport goods from East Asia to Europe.
See Less -
Kazakhstan is facing its greatest economic challenge since the global crisis. With oil prices at US$50 per barrel, the country urgently needs to adjust its economic model and find new sources of economic growth.
... See More + Kazakhstan main export has been crude oil, considered a low-complexity mineral products, which has made the country extremely vulnerable to shocks. For Kazakhstan to reach high income status it will need to move up the value chain and find new sources of growth. However, new opportunities are arising. China's new Silk Road initiative, renewed regional integration efforts through the Eurasian Economic Union, CAREC and WTO accession are opening up new prospects for Kazakhstan to integrate more successfully with the region and the world and to position itself as a key trade and transit corridor between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. While Kazakhstan outperforms its regional peers in terms of overall business environment, it still ranks poorly in trading across borders. Kazakhstan is embarking on an economic transformation at a time where new global trends are reshaping economic fundamentals. As countries in Asia and Europe enhance their living standards, opportunity costs will matter more than direct transport costs, resulting in increasing opportunities to transport goods from East Asia to Europe.
See Less -
Like many emerging economies, South Africa has identified exports as an engine for more inclusive, job-intensive growth. However, employment growth did not follow the substantial export growth that South Africa experienced in the 2000s.
... See More + This paper uses a newly developed World Bank database -- the Labor Content of Exports -- to show that the composition of South Africa's export growth helps to understand the weak relationship between export and employment growth. Minerals exports, which propelled export as well as wage growth, are not job intensive and as a result supported far less job growth. Minerals have also increasingly become an enclave sector with few backward linkages to the domestic economy. In contrast, manufacturing exports support jobs and wages primarily in input-providing sectors, where indirect manufacturing employment is nearly 4.5 times greater than direct manufacturing employment. The paper also documents a shift in the labor content of global value chain–intensive manufacturing sectors away from direct manufacturing to indirect services. Such a shift has been biased toward skilled labor. As a results of these trends, labor in services sectors has been the main beneficiary of South Africa's export growth, absorbing more than half of the growth in wage income from exports over the 2000s, primarily by supplying inputs to other sectors' exports.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8037 APR 25, 2017
This is a statement by Mr. Roberto Azevedo, Director-General at the ninety-fifth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 22, 2017. He states that the World Trade Organization (WTO) commends the efforts that the World Bank Group has taken in supporting trade related infrastructure through the aid for trade initiative.
... See More + He welcomes the steps that the World Bank governors and senior management have taken to support implementation of the WTO's trade facilitation agreement through the trade facilitation support program. This agreement has the potential to deliver significant development gains and so he hope to continue this close collaboration. The World Bank and the WTO can continue to advance their shared goals of raising living standards and ensuring a brighter future for the world's poor.
See Less -
Services play a major role in the Senegalese economy, accounting for 66 percent of economic activity and contributing nearly three-quarters of gross domestic product growth between 2006 and 2013.
... See More + During the period, the private sector contributed 71 percent of services and accounted for 84 percent of its contribution to growth. The dynamism of private services is driven primarily by telecommunications and financial services: while the two sub-sectors made up 21 percent of private services, they accounted for nearly half (48 percent) of the contributions of private services to growth during the period. These trends are projected to improve in the future. Available data on employment and credit confirm the critical importance of services. In 2013, over 50 percent of credit to the economy was devoted to services, and 55 percent of the labor force was employed in the services sector, including 36 percent of the rural workforce and as much as 80 percent of the urban workforce.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8031 APR 18, 2017
The development objective of Trade and Logistic Services Competitiveness Project aims to improve the efficiency of trade logistics services in Togo.
... See More + This project has three components. 1) The first component, Strengthening the Logistics Services and the Road Transport Sector, has the following three subcomponents: (i) Improving the Legal and Regulatory Framework for the Transport and Logistics Services Sector; (ii) Building Capacity of the Trade Logistics Services Sector; and (iii) Improving the Conditions to Modernize Trucks. 2) The second component, Improving Trade Facilitation, will provide support for the implementation of the World Trade Organizations (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) for the improvement of the enabling environment to achieve higher-quality trade logistics services, including the necessary support to enhance the efficiency of customs administrations as well as other border and trade management agencies to improve overall trade facilitation. 3) The third component, Project Management, will provide support to the Project Coordination Unit (PCU) for the coordination and implementation of project activities, including procurement, financial management (FM), monitoring and evaluation (M and E), and reporting
See Less -
Migration and trade are often linked through ethnic networks boosting bilateral trade. This study uses migration to quantify the importance of Ricardian technology differences for international trade.
... See More + The framework provides the first panel estimates connecting country-industry productivity and exports, and the study exploits heterogeneous technology diffusion from immigrant communities in the United States for identification. The latter instruments are developed by combining panel variation on the development of new technologies across US cities with historical settlement patterns for migrants from countries. The instrumented elasticity of export growth on the intensive margin with respect to the exporter's productivity growth is between 1.6 and 2.4, depending upon weighting. This provides an important contribution to the trade literature of Ricardian advantages, and it establishes a connection of migration to home country exports beyond bilateral networks.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8027 APR 10, 2017
The Development Digest is a half-yearly publication that features key works from teams based at the World Bank Group Global Knowledge and Research Hub in Malaysia.
... See More + This second issue of the Development Digest focuses on matters related to economic growth, to productivity, to increasing productivity, public service delivery, trade in Malaysia, and financing for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Lao PDR. Other articles include two pieces on agriculture, focusing on trade and regulation, respectively; innovative financial inclusion, with a spotlight on FinTech and Islamic Finance; migrant remittances; foreign exchange depreciation; the informal sector; and effective public sector implementation.
See Less -
This newsletter includes the following headings: monthly highlights; special focus; key publications of prospects group; recent World Bank working papers; key World Bank reports; table A: major data releases; table B: activity and inflation; table C: trade and finance; table D: financial markets; and table E: commodity prices.
... See More +See Less -
The emergence of global value chains has opened up new ways to achieve development and industrialization. However, new evidence shows that not all countries have gained from participating in global value chains, and that country-specific characteristics matter for economic upgrading in global value chains.
... See More + This paper uses two panel data sets of developing and industrialized countries at the sectoral level to relate global value chain participation as a buyer and seller to domestic value added. These are combined with a wide range of policy measures at the country level that can play a role in economic upgrading through global value chains, by targeting global value chain integration or the quality and conditions of input and output factors. First, the study finds that global value chain integration increases domestic value added, especially on the selling side, which holds across all income levels. Second, the results highlight the importance of policy for economic upgrading through global value chain integration. Although the study cannot claim causal evidence, all the assessed policy areas are consistently shown to mediate the effects of global value chains and magnify the gains for domestic value added. Third, a detailed analysis shows that several policy areas mediate the gains from global value chains more through integration as a seller. Finally, the study observes that many of the results are driven by high- and upper-middle-income countries.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8007 MAR 16, 2017
This paper compares redistribution through trade restrictions versus domestic lump-sum transfers. When preferences are non-homothetic, even domestic lump-sum transfers affect relative prices.
... See More + Thus, contrary to the conventional wisdom, domestic lump-sum transfers are not necessarily superior to distortionary trade policy. The paper develops this argument in the context of the food export bans imposed by many developing countries in the late 2000s.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS8005 MAR 14, 2017
