What Is Economic Corridor Development and What Can It Achieve in Asia's Subregions?

Economic corridors connect economic agents along a defined geography and region. They provide important connections between economic nodes or hubs that are usually centered in urban landscapes. The report lays out modeling approaches and experiences for economic corridor development, and for prioritizing potential policies and interventions which combine for regional distributions of economic impacts. What economic corridors can achieve for regional economic integration depends first on what characteristics the specific existing economic networks in which the economic corridors are embedded personify, and second on which characteristics corridor development are intended to introduce or strengthen. Corridor characteristics interact dynamically to create patterns of regional economic development. Models that make this interaction explicit have combined elements of the New Economic Geography (nonlinear and General Equilibrium elements). The Asian Development Bank has a significant stake in the successful application of corridor development approaches with an annual investment of $2 billion or more in regional cooperation and integration