Description
Book SynopsisAnalysis of infrastructure's role in facilitating international trade and consequently regional economic integration is still rudimentary. This original book fills that knowledge gap by exploring relevant concepts, measurement issues, aspects of the implementation of trade-related infrastructure facilities and their impacts on poverty, trade, investment and macroeconomic balances.
Continuing the series of books produced in association with the Asian Development Bank Institute, this study explores the virtuous cycle of infrastructure investment, trade expansion and economic growth in developing Asia. Issues relating infrastructure, both hard and soft, to trade facilitation and trade costs are defined and examined, and the role of infrastructure in regional cooperation to enhance intraregional trade is analysed. Empirical estimates of trade costs in Asia suggest there is significant room for infrastructure to lower those costs further. By approaching the infrastructure-trade nexus at the regional level through cooperative activities, this study shows it is possible to increase the range of policy options and risk management opportunities.
Infrastructure and Trade in Asia will be of interest to trade and infrastructure policymakers, academics at graduate and above levels involved in economic development and Asian studies as well as those in the development community interested in regional cooperation and integration.
Trade Review'. . . this is a timely and useful collection of regional studies.' -- Ben Shepherd, Asian Pacific Economic Literature
Table of ContentsContents: Foreword Masahiro Kawai 1. Infrastructure and Trade in Asia: An Overview Douglas H. Brooks and Jayant Menon PART I: CONCEPTS AND MEASUREMENT ISSUES 2. A Framework for Considering Infrastructure for Regional Co-operation John Weiss 3. Trade Facilitation: What, Why, How, Where and When? Philippa Dee, Christopher Findlay and Richard Pomfret 4. Regional Co-operation, Governance, Soft Infrastructure and Trading Costs Haider A. Khan 5. Empirical Estimates of Trade Costs for Asia Prabir De PART II: IMPLEMENTATION AND IMPACTS OF REGIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE 6. Roads and Poverty: A General Equilibrium Analysis for Lao PDR Jayant Menon and Peter Warr 7. Road Infrastructure and Regional Economic Integration: Evidence from the Mekong Christopher Edmonds and Manabu Fujimura 8. Meeting the MDG Water Target in Asia: The Role of Regional Co-operation P.B. Anand 9. Infrastructure Financing: Impacts on Macroeconomic Balances Douglas H. Brooks and Fan Zhai Index
