Access to basic infrastructure services - roads, electricity, water, sanitation - and the efficient provision of the services, is a key challenge in the fight against poverty. Many of the poor (and particularly the extreme poor) in rural communities in Latin America live on average 5 kilometers...

There is increasing empirical evidence that vertical product differentiation is an important determinant of international trade. However, the economic literature so far has solely focused on the case in which quality trade stems from differences between countries. No studies investigate the role...

Based on a detailed empirical study, this paper argues that regional liberalization of trucking services has had an important effect on transport costs and tariffs for Zambia's economy. Zambia is a peculiar example in Southern Africa as it benefits from relatively low transport costs compared...

This paper examines opportunities for Sub-Saharan African countries to effectively participate in globalization, particularly given the increasing interest of China and India in Sub-Saharan Africa. How can Sub-Saharan Africa fully engage and gain benefits from global network trade? Over the past...

In spite of the growing concerns about foreign direct investment being diverted from Latin America to China and India, the best available data show that Latin America has performed relatively well since 1997. Foreign capital stocks from OECD countries and the United States in particular in China...

This paper assesses the impact of internal infrastructure and landlockedness on Central Asian trade using a panel gravity equation estimated on a large sample of countries (167 countries over 1992-2004). The panel structure of the dataset makes it possible to control for country-pair specific...

A large proportion of the least developed countries are landlocked and their access to world markets depends on the availability of a trade corridor and transit systems. Based on empirical evidence from World Bank projects and assessments in Africa, Central Asia, and elsewhere, this paper...