This paper explores the relationship between the regional business environment, lagging regions, and firm performance in four European countries: Italy, Poland, Romania, and Spain. It combines firm-level data from Orbis measuring sales, employment, productivity, and profitability, with...

Using highly disaggregated firm-level customs transaction data for imports and exports in Peru over the 2000?2012 period, this paper explores the relationship between imports of intermediate inputs and firm export performance. The paper shows that greater use, variety, and quality of imported...

Global value chains have altered the nature of global trade and offer significant opportunities for developing countries to expand exports, access technology, and raise productivity. Policy makers rightly seek to understand what it takes to participate in global value chains. In practice, this...

Transport and logistics infrastructure is a critical determinant of the competitiveness of a country's producers and exporters. Well-functioning transport and logistics infrastructure relies not just on hardware, but critically on the operating environment that emerges from the interaction...

Deeper regional integration can be beneficial especially for regions along international borders. It can open up new markets on opposite sides of borders and give consumers wider access to cheaper goods. This paper uses data from five contiguous districts of India, Nepal, and Bangladesh in the...

Using a cross-section of more than 25,000 domestic manufacturing firms in 78 low and middle-income countries from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys, this paper assesses how mediating factors influence intra-industry productivity spillovers to domestic firms from foreign direct investment. It...

Integration in the East African Community offers significant opportunities not only to expand trade among member states, but more importantly to scale up regional production to take advantage of much larger global market opportunities. Special economic zones are a potentially valuable instrument...

Using a cross-section of more than 40,000 manufacturing and services firms in 79 developing countries from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys Database, this paper assesses how firm location determines the likelihood and extent of exporting in developing countries. Descriptive statistics confirm...

As an instrument of trade and investment policy, special economic zones have played a catalytic role in processes of industrialization, diversification, and trade integration in many countries, particularly in East Asia. However, in the African context, anecdotal evidence suggests the experience...

Trade has proven to be a powerful engine of growth worldwide. But not all countries have benefited equally. Despite much effort to use trade policy to catalyze exports, many developing countries have failed to achieve successful, sustainable exportand economic growth. Even with the benefit of...