Edward Elgar Publishing Infrastructure’s Role in Lowering Asia’s Trade Costs: Building for Trade (ADBI series on Asian Economic Integration and Cooperation)

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. Review 'This edited volume of eight insightful essays offers an excellent immediate overview of the emerging dynamics within the [Southeast Asian] region. . . This book presents a fascinating overview of the manner in which capitalism continues to transform Southeast Asia's transport infrastructure. . . a fascinating and invaluable accumulation of data, which future historians and social scientists can turn back to and usefully employ when the history of the first part of the Asian twenty-first century is eventually being written.' -- Alex Marshall, East Asia Integration Studies'Most of the analysis of infrastructure's impact on trade costs has focused on conditions in more developed countries. This volume contributes to our understanding by examining the situation in developing Asia, the world's most populous and fastest growing region. Chapters explore topics ranging from Asian trade patterns and trade costs to port competitiveness, congestion, and foreign direct investment in trade-related infrastructure. Empirical estimates complement the analysis of issues to inform the policy-making process.' -- From the foreword by Masahiro Kawai, Asian Development Bank Institute About the Author Edited by Douglas H. Brooks, Australian APEC Study Centre, RMIT University, Australia and David Hummels, Professor of Economics, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University and Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research, US