{"title":"Directions In Development - Trade Ser","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"why-does-cargo-spend-weeks-in-sub-saharan-african-ports-book-gael-raballand-9780821394991","title":"Why Does Cargo Spend Weeks in Sub-Saharan African Ports?","description":"This book argues that long dwell time in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) ports is not exclusively the responsibility of customs as usually believed. The private sector (terminal operator, customs broker, owner of container depots, and even importers) has not necessarily an interest in reducing time spent in ports. The solution to decrease dwell time in these ports relies mainly on the challenging task of breaking the private sector’s collusion and equilibrium between public authorities, logistics operators, and some importers. This book was written in the context of increasing investment by the international community in projects that promote trade facilitation and improvement in logistics in the developing world, including in ports, mainly based on the assumption that in ports, customs (and other controlling agencies) have to be mainly blamed for abnormal delays. However, customs responsibility (especially for months-long delays) may not be as important as usually believed and therefore requires in-depth data collection and analysis which has been lacking so far. The authors disentangle cargo delays in ports with comprehensive data collection in six ports in SSA and firms’ surveys in five countries. Based on this data collection, they find that cargo dwell time in ports in SSA (except Durban) are very long compared to large ports in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. In these ports, there is collusion between controlling agencies, port authorities, private terminal operators, logistics operators (freight forwarders) and large shippers at the expense of consumers. The market structure of the private sector explains the hysteresis of cargo dwell time. Finally, the structure of the SSA economies with few export-oriented producers (and the dominance of traditional import\/export traders) reinforces the status quo since they are usually not organized to be competitive worldwide.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49600001999121,"sku":"GOR008771712","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52608594379025,"sku":"NLS9780821394991","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0821394991.jpg?v=1763483538"},{"product_id":"special-economic-zones-book-gokhan-akinci-9780821387634","title":"Special Economic Zones","description":"For countries as diverse as China and Mauritius, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been a powerful tool to attract foreign investment, promote export-oriented growth, and generate employment; for many others, the results have been less than encouraging. While the benefits and limitations of zones will no doubt continue to be debated, what is clear is that policymakers are increasingly attracted to them as an instrument of trade, investment, industrial, and spatial policy. Since the mid 1980s, the number of newly-established zones has grown rapidly in almost all regions, with dramatic growth in developing countries. In parallel with this growth and in the evolving context of global trade and investment, zones are also undergoing significant change in both their form and function, with traditional export processing zones (EPZs) increasingly giving way to larger and more flexible SEZ models. This new context will bring significant opportunities for developing countries to take advantage of SEZs, but will also raise new challenges to their successful design and implementation. This volume aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role and practice of SEZs in developing countries, in order to better equip policymakers in making effective decisions in planning and implementing SEZ programs. It covers some of the emerging issues and challenges in SEZs - including upgrading, regional integration, WTO compliance, innovation, the environment, and gender issues - with practical case examples from SEZ programs in developing countries.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50367960711441,"sku":"CIN0821387634G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52125120266513,"sku":"NLS9780821387634","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0821387634.jpg?v=1763225500"},{"product_id":"pathways-to-african-export-sustainability-book-paul-brenton-9780821395592","title":"Pathways to African Export Sustainability","description":"African exporters suffer from low survival rates on international markets. They fail more often than others, incurring time and again the setup costs involved in starting new relationships. This high churning is a source of waste, uncertainty, and discouragement. However, this trend is not inevitable. The high infant mortality of African exports is largely explained by Africa's low-income business environment and, once properly benchmarked, Africa's performance in terms of exporter failure is no outlier. Moreover, African exporters show vigorous entrepreneurship, with high entry rates into new products and markets despite formidable hurdles created by poor infrastructure, landlocked boundaries for some, and limited access to major sea routes for others. African exporters experiment a lot, and they frequently pay the price of failure. What matters for policy is how to ensure that viable ventures survive. Research carried out for this book demonstrates that governments can and should help to reduce the rate of failure of African export ventures through a mixture of improvements in the business environment, as well as well-targeted proactive interventions. The business environment can be made more conducive to sustainable export entrepreneurship through traditional policy prescriptions such as reducing transportation costs, facilitating trade through better technology and workflow in border management, improving the effectiveness of banking regulations to ensure the availability of trade finance, and striving for regulatory simplicity and coherence. In addition, governments can help leverage synergies between exporters. Original research featured in this book shows that African exporters improve each other's chances of survival when a critical mass of them penetrates a given market together. They also benefit from diaspora presence in destination markets. With adequate donor support and private-sector engagement, export-promotion agencies and technical-assistance programs can help leverage those synergies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52481743683857,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52481744634129,"sku":"NLS9780821395592","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780821395592.jpg?v=1763226214"},{"product_id":"streamlining-non-tariff-measures-book-olivier-cadot-9780821395103","title":"Streamlining Non-Tariff Measures","description":"This toolkit provides a novel approach and a set of tools that allow policymakers and analysts to identify non-tariff measures (NTMs), assess their trade restrictiveness and impact on prices and welfare, and to strengthen the institutional coordination mechanism, transparency, and regulatory governance on NTMs. It also aims at encouraging economies to increasingly address the NTM agenda from a domestic competitiveness and\/or poverty perspective rather than from a mercantilist standpoint of concessions to trading partners. NTMs are policy measures, other than ordinary customs tariffs, that can potentially have an economic effect on international trade in goods, changing quantities traded, or prices or both. While most NTMs are already subject to WTO disciplines, the main challenge is to allow governments to address public policy concerns without unnecessarily hurting trade competitiveness and while preventing disguised protectionism. This toolkit is predicated on the idea that the complexity and diversity of NTMs should be recognized. Problems should be identified at the country level through consultations with the private sector, and technical solutions should be sought through careful analysis and private\/public dialogue. The underlying philosophy is similar to what is known as “Regulatory Impact Assessment” (RIA), but applied to the review of existing measures (no ex ante analysis), in response to specific demands from countries struggling with legacies of complicated and penalizing regulations. Dealing with existing measures has the advantage of responding to an immediate need and focusing on measures whose effects are known. The toolkit is organized as follows. Chapter 1 discusses the newly revamped NTM classification and pervasiveness of NTM. Chapter 2 elaborates on the analytics of an NTM review, walking the reader step by step through the key questions. Chapter 3 focuses on the institutional set up and key principles to successfully pursue the streamlining of regulations. Finally, chapters 4 and 5 provide some practical cases of streamlining both at the country and regional levels, and for product specific examples.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52538867417361,"sku":"NLS9780821395103","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780821395103.jpg?v=1763222636"},{"product_id":"borderless-bazaars-and-border-trade-in-central-asia-book-bartlomiej-kaminski-9780821394717","title":"Borderless Bazaars and Border Trade in Central Asia","description":"Trade that straddles borders in Central Asia plays a vital role in the livelihoods of border communities and buttresses prosperity in often poor regions. By strengthening commercial ties, cultural understanding and deepening community relationships, border trade nurtures amicable relations between neighboring countries. This book examines the characteristics of trade intermediated by a network of bazaars in Central Asia and its significance for local economies. It uncovers the dynamic phenomenon of bazaars in propelling trade. Bazaars were invented in central Asia centuries ago; in their modern form, as highly flexible and low cost centers for trade, endowed with modern sophisticated logistics, bazaars provide a channel parallel to that of formal trade. Bazaars play major roles in regional and national chains of production and distribution with national networks strongly integrated and overlapping across Central Asian economies. They are the major agents for border trade, which fights poverty by cheapening products and by creating employment opportunities, especially for women. The book examines the public policy implications of bazaar or non-standard trade and actions that could be taken to foster such trade. A light regulatory touch and a low fiscal burden would help fight poverty. Improvements in the business climate and elimination of harassment of traders by local officials as well as easing conditions for the movement of peoples and vehicles would be hugely beneficial. But this book goes beyond trade. It considers the potential for border community cooperation in a variety of activities, public services, and shared infrastructure, culture that could yield rich dividends and make meaningless borders as separators of human activities. It examines the example of border cooperation in Europe through Euroregios as a model for Central Asia. Finally, the book concludes with a series of recommendations for public authorities intended to deepen border trade and cooperation.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52583637942545,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52583638597905,"sku":"NLS9780821394717","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780821394717.jpg?v=1763226010"},{"product_id":"natural-resource-abundance-growth-and-diversification-in-the-middle-east-and-nor-book-ndiame-diop-9780821395912","title":"Natural Resource Abundance, Growth, and Diversification in the Middle East and North Africa","description":"MENA is one of the richest regions in the world in terms of natural resources: it holds more than 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, mostly located in the Gulf region, and nearly half of gas reserves. Oil represents 80-85 percent of merchandise exports in the region, making it highly depending on fluctuations in international prices. A long strand of economic literature has suggested that such dependence may hurt a country's growth prospects and the scope for job creation by reducing economic diversification. This volume investigates the effect of natural resources and the role of policies on achieving higher and sustained growth through diversification away from oil. It explores analytical questions which include: (i) the impact of the real exchange rate on manufacturing and tradable services competitiveness in MENA; (ii) the role of fiscal policy in supporting diversification; (iii) how weak links (input sectors with low productivity) play a critical role in explaining the concentration of economic activities, in addition to the classical Dutch Disease effect and (iv) the impact of macroeconomic factors on the drive for regional integration Several policy recommendations emerge from this analysis: (i) policymakers should strive to avoid real exchange rate overvaluation through consistent fiscal policies, flexible exchange rates and adequate product and factor market regulations; (ii) reforms to improve the competition and efficiency of upstream input activities are crucial for improving the performance of downstream activities and diversification in MENA (iii) a consistent and transparent fiscal policy is essential to reduce instability, build the fiscal space needed to invest in core infrastructure and human capital and create a favorable environment for diversification; (iv) while regional trade integration is desirable for political, social, cultural and economic reasons, in terms of trade liberalization, this is not the best option for resource-rich countries of the region. Policymakers should take this into account in discussing regional integration options. It is hoped that the findings of this work will be of interest to policymakers, the civil society, donors and practitioners in MENA countries and stimulate the debate of such an important topic.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52594735415569,"sku":"NLS9780821395912","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780821395912.jpg?v=1763220617"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/directions-in-development-trade-ser-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}