Infrastructure's Role in Lowering Asia's Trade Costs - Building for Trade

Much of the analysis of infrastructure's impact on trade costs focuses on conditions in developed countries. This book makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding by examining the situation in developing Asia, the world's most populous and fastest growing region. This study analyzes 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) 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, academics at graduate and higher levels involved in economic development or Asian studies, as well as the broader development community.