Person:
Iimi, Atsushi
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Industrial organization,
Development economics
Degrees
External Links
Departments
Transport Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
August 2, 2023
Biography
Atsushi Iimi is a Senior Economist in the Transport Global Practice of the World Bank where he specializes in development economics related to the Bank’s transport operations in Africa. He joined the World Bank in 2006 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Brown University. Before joining the Bank, he also worked at IMF and JICA/OEFC, Japan. His research interests include spatial analysis, rural accessibility, evaluation of transport and energy projects, growth and public expenditure. His research on these topics has been published in scholarly journals, such as the Review of Industrial Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Applied Economics, the Development Economies, and IMF Staff Papers.
Publication Search Results
1 - 2 of 2
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Publication
Estimating the Impacts of Transport Corridor Development in Kazakhstan: Application of Dynamic Panel Data Models to Firm Registry Data
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-09)Large-scale transport infrastructure investment can facilitate structural transformation by changing firm behavior. Although its impact is evident over the long term, an important empirical challenge is potential endogeneity of infrastructure placement. By using the dynamic panel data regression, the paper examines the impacts of massive road corridor investment under the Nurly Zhol program in Kazakhstan. The paper takes advantage of detailed micro shipping data to capture historical changes in transport connectivity over the past 10 years. While the average travel speed has slightly increased, transport costs have been nearly halved. The estimated translog cost functions indicate that local market accessibility is the most important factor to boost firm productivity. The elasticity was 0.24 in absolute terms. Inventory is found to be a major cost factor for firms. It is found that a 10-percent improvement in accessibility to large cities, such as Astana and Almaty, could allow firms to reduce their inventory by 8.7 percent. The market accessibility is found to foster firm agglomerations, but agglomeration economies do not seem to translate into higher firm productivity. This is possibly because the Kazakh economy still lacks effective forward or backward linkages across industries. -
Publication
Agglomeration Economies and Transport Connectivity Revisited: A Regional Perspective Based on Evidence from the Caucasus and Central Asian Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-08-02)Transport connectivity is an important determinant of agglomeration economies and urbanization. However, measuring its impacts is a complex task when causality is considered. An important empirical challenge comes from potential endogeneity of infrastructure placement. To deal with the endogeneity problem, first, the paper constructs detailed georeferenced connectivity measurements based on micro shipping data collected over 10 years. Then, the system generalized method of moments regression is applied. Using unique data from the Caucasus and Central Asian countries, the paper estimates the impact of transport connectivity on agglomeration economies. It finds that agglomeration economies are significant and persistent in the region. Thus, the existing firm clusters are likely to continue growing. However, a constraint is also found. Large cities exhibit congestion diseconomies. Finally, the paper shows that the improvement of transport connectivity, especially local market accessibility, has a significant effect on agglomeration. By contrast, no clear evidence to support the impact of improved regional connectivity on agglomeration is observed yet. To take full advantage of agglomeration economies at the regional level, further efforts may be needed, for instance, toward increasing efficiency in transportation and logistics, improving the freight load, and/or reducing the time and costs of border crossing, which add to overall transport costs and times.