Douglas H. Brooks - Böcker

Analysis 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.

This book analyses and draws policy implications from infrastructure's central role in lowering Asia's trade costs. Infrastructure is shown to be a cost-effective means of lowering trade costs and thereby promoting regional growth and integration. This book combines thematic and country studies, while breaking new ground in quantifying infrastructure's impact on Asia's trade costs. The contributors examine empirical estimates of Asia's trade costs and infrastructure's influence on those costs while also contributing to a better understanding of the region's logistics challenges. The book includes interesting case studies of rapid growth and congestion (in PRC), inland transportation challenges (India), port competition in an archipelago (Indonesia) and transportation modal switching as value-added rises (Malaysia) that are policy- and project-relevant in their own right. The analysis and policy implications in this book will be of interest to trade and infrastructure policy-makers and academics at graduate and higher levels involved in economic development or Asian studies, as well as the broader development community.