Foreign Trade, FDI, and Capital Flows Study
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Publication
Costa Rica : Five Years after CAFTA-DR, Assessing Early Results for the Costa Rican Economy
(Washington, DC, 2014-06-13)The Dominican Republic - Central America - United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) has been fundamental in creating a stable framework for Costa Rica's trade with the United States. For Costa Rica, CAFTA-DR is more than a trade agreement. Besides eliminating tariffs and reducing non-tariff barriers between member countries, CAFTA-DR also introduced major changes to the legal framework of member countries, reducing barriers to services, promoting transparency, and ensuring a secure and predictable environment for investors. This report analyses how CAFTA-DR has impacted the Costa Rican economy in the five years after ratification, both on a macro level and in key specific sectors. The report shows that CAFTA-DR is yielding benefits to the Costa Rican economy, but it is too early to provide a complete account just after five years. The agreement has succeeded to further trade integration between Costa Rica, the US, and other CAFTA-DR countries. Exports to the US began increasing several years before the agreement, but CAFTA-DR accelerated the trend. Costa Rica continues attracting FDI above levels observed in other CAFTA-DR countries, with an increasing share from US investors and a focus on medical devices and business services. Online survey and interviews of high-tech firms in free trade zones found that CAFTA-DR was an important factor in the investment decisions. CAFTA-DR ignited an explosion of changes in the telecom and insurance sectors, bringing new regulatory frameworks, competition, product innovations, and price reductions. Consumers are reaping the benefits of improved telecom and insurance services. But some issues remain for those markets to mature. Finally, the concern regarding the potential negative impact on the Costa Rican Social Security Administration's finances due to the intellectual property rights measures have not been observed. -
Publication
Afghanistan Diagnostics Trade Integration Study
(Washington, DC, 2012-11)Trade enables countries to import ideas and technologies, realize comparative advantages and economies of scale, and foster competition and innovation, which in turn increases productivity and achieves higher sustainable employment and economic growth. Countries open to international trade tend to provide more opportunities to their people, and grow faster. Afghanistan could derive far more benefit from its international trade opportunities than it does at present. This Diagnostics Trade Integration Study (DTIS) report is intended to identify concrete policy actions in three areas of endeavor: lowering the transaction costs of trade, increasing Afghanistan's competitiveness in world markets, and providing an analytical foundation for Afghanistan's national trade strategy. The study examines how to do this, looking not only at trade performance and policy, but also at three sectors with great export potential: agriculture, gemstones and carpets, as well as the investment climate, customs as a driver of trade facilitation, and on promoting infrastructure services. All five chapters in this report provide a detailed and comprehensive analysis of trade issues intended to reduce the transaction costs of trade. Growth in Afghanistan has been strong and volatile because of its heavy reliance on agriculture. Now it faces a transition: prospects of a drawdown of international military forces and a decline in civilian aid by 2014. Security issues and political instability could undermine Afghanistan's Transition. Such threats could harm not only economic growth, but deterioration would repel private-sector investment. -
Publication
Reshaping Economic Geography of East Africa : From Regional to Global Integration, Volume 2. Technical Annexes
(Washington, DC, 2012-06)Five East African countries Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda have made solid progress on integrating regionally in the East African Community (EAC) since 1999. Such advances are crucial, as integration in East Africa has the potential for higher than usual benefits: Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda are landlocked, with very high costs to their economies. Successful integration will transform the five countries into one coastal, regional economy, slashing such costs. Looking at the East African integration through the lens of economic geography helps to improve sequencing of the integration process and to develop new policies to complement ongoing efforts, maximizing their benefits. Reducing disparities in provision of social services will increase the chances of workers from the inland parts of the EAC to find jobs, especially as administrative obstacles to labor mobility are being removed under the Common Market Protocol. Implementing and deepening the current program of regional infrastructure improvements will ensure that consumers and producers throughout the region are better connected to each other and to global markets. Integration policies facilitating greater economic activity in the coastal areas will help the EAC take advantage of the global demand for manufactured goods and thus to promote employment. That will also generate substantial demand for services and agricultural goods produced inland, amplifying the benefits of the customs union. -
Publication
Reaping Benefits of FDI and Reshaping Shanghai's Economic Landscape
(Washington, DC, 2011-01)Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has played a significant and positive role in driving economic growth and upgrading economic structure in Shanghai. The shift in the pattern of FDI over the last decade towards services has been particularly crucial. Given its importance, Shanghai municipal government may continue to devote efforts to attract FDI and have foreign funded enterprises help reshape Shanghai's economic landscape. The main importance of FDI to Shanghai lies less in its capital finance, and more in the extent to which foreign funded enterprises (FFEs) help move the city up the value chain and generate high-end jobs. In the post-financial crisis era, developing countries will take a much larger role in leading world growth while enhanced competition will accelerate the pace of service revolution. Possessing strong geographic advantages, Shanghai has the potential to become an international business and financial hub and to have the high-tech industries and services being the driving force of the growth. Shanghai has strong potential in reaping the benefits of FDI and reshaping its economic landscape in 12th Five Year Plan period. In terms of the three conditions to succeed good opportunity, favorable geographic location and harmonious society, Shanghai is already in a good position. This note seeks to provide insights to help the Shanghai government make the right decisions and trade-offs to better reap the benefits of FDI in the context of a changing global context. -
Publication
Deepening Trade Reforms in Syria for Improving Competitiveness and Promoting Non-Oil Exports
(Washington, DC, 2010-09)Syria made promotion of non-oil exports one of the main objectives of its development strategy to counter the emerging twin balance of payments and fiscal deficits resulting from secular decline of oil production and exports. To realize this objective, the Government has implemented a number of trade policy reforms and took complementary measures in other policy areas during the 10th five-year plan to improve competitiveness of Syrian products in international markets. Non-oil exports responded strongly to the policy improvements. There is now a wide recognition of the need for further reforms to maintain this momentum. This paper tried to assess the achievement so far, identify the remaining gaps in the trade regime, and recommend follow up measures for broadening and deepening the trade reforms. The principal recommendations are presented in the attached policy matrix. The objective of export incentives is to reduce the costs of exported products with policy instruments consistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. -
Publication
Exports, Export Destinations, and Skills
( 2010-05)This paper explores the links between exports, export destinations and skill utilization by firms. The authors identify two mechanisms behind these links, which we integrate into a unified theory of export destinations and skills. First, exporting to high-income countries requires quality upgrades that are skill-intensive (Verhoogen, 2008). Second, exporting in general, and exporting to high-income destinations in particular, requires services like distribution, transportation, and advertising, activities that are also intensive in skilled labor (Matsuyama, 2007). Both theories suggest a skill-bias in export destinations: firms that export to high-income destinations hire more skills and pay higher wages than firms that export to middle-income countries or that sells domestically. The authors test the theory using a panel of manufacturing Argentine firms. The data cover the period 1998-2000 and thus span the Brazilian currency devaluation of 1999. The authors use the exogenous changes in exports and export destinations brought about by this devaluation in a major export partner to identify the causal effect of exporting and of exporting to high-income countries on skill utilization. The authors fine that Argentine firms exporting to high-income countries hired a higher proportion of skilled workers and paid higher average wages than other exporters (to non high-income countries) and domestic firms. Instead, the authors cannot identify any causal effect of exporting per se on either skill utilization or average wages. -
Publication
Patterns of Foreign Direct Investment Flows and Trade-Investment Inter-Linkages in Southern Africa : Linking Middle-Income and Low-Income Neighbors
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-05)This report discusses the patterns of foreign direct investment flows and trade-investment inter-linkages in Southern Africa. It will discuss how cross-border investment flows create a possible channel of growth spillover from South Africa and other MICs to LICs in the subregion, and identify the roles of subregional trade and investment flows in generating these neighborhood effects with LICs. After an introduction with background on the subregion of Southern Africa, Section 2 provides facts on the patterns of trade in Southern African countries to illustrate how much (or little) the Southern African subregion is integrated today and whether or not intraregional trade is growing. Section 3 presents aggregate trends in foreign direct investment flows (and stocks) in SSA, discusses how SASR is situated in such trends, and analyzes the emerging trends of intra-SASR cross-border investments, largely driven by South Africa. Section 4 analyzes trade-investment linkages in Southern Africa at the firm level. Section 5 discusses areas of domestic policies in enhancing trade and foreign direct investment in Southern Africa. Section 6 summarizes the findings from this analysis and discusses their policy implications. -
Publication
Liberia - Tapping Nature’s Bounty for the Benefits of All : Diagnostic Trade Integration Study, Volume 1. Main Report
(Washington, DC, 2008-12)Liberia is a rich country, badly managed. This is a favorite comment of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and an accurate one. The bad management is well-known, though perhaps not its duration and depth. Created in 1847, the country is far older than almost all others in sub- Saharan Africa. But for most of this time, it was ruled by an elite descended from African-American settlers who ignored or exploited the indigenous people. The result was growth without development, stark inequality, social tension and the seeds of unrest. The political order was turned upside down in a bloody coup in 1980, but bad management continued. Within ten years the country descended into civil war from which it only emerged in 2003. The 90 percent decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is possibly the most extreme economic collapse ever experienced in the world. This study lays out a comprehensive pro poor trade strategy in support of the medium-term growth agenda of Liberia. The new Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) for Liberia recognizes all this. Indeed, this Diagnostic Trade Integration Study (DTIS) and the PRS were developed in parallel and with considerable cross-fertilization. A joint workshop was held on the productive sectors in February 2008. The role of this study is therefore to reinforce the message contained in the PRS, deepen the analysis, and offer some practical next steps. -
Publication
China Capital Markets Development Report : China Securities Regulation Commission
(China Financial Publishing House, 2008-01)The 'China capital markets development report' provides a good overview of the development of China's capital markets and explores future strategies. The report starts by reviewing historical events in the evolution of China's capital markets which have grown from small and unorganized regional markets into a national market today. By summarizing lessons learned during the market evolution and analyzing major gaps between China's capital markets and more mature markets, the report tries to propose a strategic design and vision for China's capital markets development for the next decade and beyond. Since the commencement of economic reform and opening up, China has gone through significant economic and social changes, and the socialist market economic regime has been established and steadily improved. Between 1979 and 2007, China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been growing above 9 percent annually on average and China has become the fourth largest economy in the World. China's capital markets emerged and developed during the same period. With joint efforts by all relevant parties, China's capital markets have been able to reach a level of development that took many mature markets decades or even a hundred years to achieve. Along the way, the legal and regulatory frameworks, and trading and clearing systems have developed according to international best practice and China's capital markets have been increasingly recognized by international investors. The emergence and development of capital markets has been closely linked to mass production. They are the prerequisite for, and important indicators of, a modern market economy. Capital markets promote the development and improvement of market-driven resource allocation, resulting in the optimization of social resources. As the world financial markets become increasingly global and integrated, competition among capital markets and financial centers around the world is becoming increasingly intensive, leading to a fast-changing landscape in capital markets. The competitiveness and viability of the capital markets have become important components of national competitiveness. -
Publication
Burkina Faso : The Challenge of Export Diversification for a Landlocked Country
(Washington, DC, 2007-09)The objective of the Diagnostic Trade Integration Study (DTIS) is to build the foundation for accelerated growth by enhancing the integration of its economy into regional and global markets. Burkina Faso is one of the best economic performers in West Africa, yet its integration into the world economy, as measured by its trade and foreign investment performance, is among the lowest. Economic growth has been strong, higher than all other countries in the sub-region. This has been achieved in spite of droughts and cricket invasions, and the turmoil in Cote d'Ivoire, and without significant oil or mining exports. Macroeconomic management has been consistently strong, and inflation low. At the same time, its export to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is only one-third that of Senegal or Mali, while foreign directs investment inflows are far below the average for sub-Saharan Africa. At a time when globalization is determining the fate of nations, Burkina Faso seems to be on the sidelines and doing fairly well. If the country is to raise economic growth rates to the levels necessary to make major inroads on poverty, and reduce its aid dependence, it will need to improve its performance on exports and foreign investment. Implementation of a weighing program to fight against overloading of merchandise, coordinated along all the corridors.The challenge for Burkina Faso is to step up efforts to consolidate this sound performance in order to accelerate growth and deepen the fight against poverty. These efforts will be deployed on three fronts. The first consists in maintaining macroeconomic stability to improve the international competitiveness of the economy; the second, diversifying exports to expand trade and stimulate growth; and the third, strengthening social sectors and small operators in order to make growth inclusive and to maximize its impact on poverty reduction. This study focuses on the second challenge, taking into account the importance of participation by small operators.