Armenia did it through trade logistics reform - with help from International Finance Corporation's (IFC's) Armenia doing business reform and regulatory simplification project, launched in February 2009. The project team builds constructive relationships-including well-designed and consistent...

Trade facilitation connects economies and provides opportunities for business growth. However, the national agencies involved in trade often have different objectives, lack coordination with peer agencies in other countries because of different national priorities, high workloads, and absence of...

Economic activity in many African countries remains highly concentrated and exports are often dominated by mineral resources or a few primary products. The World Bank’s 2011 report on light manufacturing in Africa identified poor trade logistics performance as a constraint that especially...

Belarus is a member of Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), bordering three European Union (EU) countries (Poland,Lithuania and Latvia), Ukraine and Russia. As such, the country is strategically located for international transit trade. With the aim of boosting the country’s transit role, the...

The objective of this note is to identify the key issues in trade facilitation and logistics that affect the e-commerce landscape, with a focus on cross border (trade facilitation) domestic delivery (logistics); highlight key challenges and opportunities, particularly for developing countries...

The debate on whether natural disasters cause significant macroeconomic impacts and indeed hinder development is ongoing. Most analyses along these lines have focused on impacts on gross domestic product. This paper looks beyond this standard national accounting aggregate, and examines whether...

East Asia has experienced a dramatic decrease in output growth volatility over the past 20 years. This is good news, as output growth volatility affects poor households because of coping strategies that have long-term, harmful consequences, and the overall economy through its negative impact on...

This paper analyzes the drivers and consequences of sudden stops of capital flows. It focuses on the impact of external vulnerability on the depth and length of sudden stop crises. The authors analyze 43 developing and developed countries between 1993 and 2006. They find evidence that external...

This paper analyzes the impact of banking crises on manufacturing exports exploiting the fact that sectors differ in their needs for external financing. Relying on data from 23 banking crises episodes involving both developed and developing countries during the period 1980-2000 the authors...