Like in many large cities in developing countries, traffic in Grand Casablanca, Morocco, is congested and public buses are crowded. These conditions are alleviated by a combination of supply-side infrastructure expansions, such as more buses and new road capacity, and demand-side pricing...

Disruption of infrastructure services can cause significant social and economic losses, particularly in the event of a natural disaster. The World Bank Group and the Government of Japan established the Quality Infrastructure Investment Partnership to focus attention on the quality dimensions of...

In Central America, like many other developing regions, high transport costs are cited as an impediment to trade and economic growth. Prices for road freight transport -- a key mode of transport comprising a significant share of total transport costs for intra- and extra-regional trade, are...

What are the main determinants of transport costs: network access or competition among transport providers? The focus in the transport sector has often been on improving the coverage of "hard" infrastructure, whereas in reality the cost of transporting goods is quite sensitive to the extent of...

The paper provides evidence of the effects of changes in transport costs on the geographic concentration of industries. The analysis uses micro-level commodity flow data and micro-geographic plant-level data to construct industry-specific ad valorem trucking rates and continuous measures of...

Regulatory frameworks on logistics regulations are often opaque, especially in developing countries, because of the complex nature of logistics services. World Bank client countries have faced difficulty finding the issues that hinder them from improving logistics competence. Therefore, it is...

A large proportion of the least developed countries are landlocked and their access to world markets depends on the availability of a trade corridor and transit systems. Based on empirical evidence from World Bank projects and assessments in Africa, Central Asia, and elsewhere, this paper...

The effects of urban transport policies on household welfare are a broadly understudied topic in developing countries. This paper analyzes the distributional effects of a newly established bus rapid transit system in Barranquilla, Colombia. The paper uses pooled cross-sectional household survey...

This paper examines the linkages between urban form and city productivity, using alternative metrics for urban form and applying them to a comprehensive sample of Latin American cities. Although most of the literature has concentrated on the effects of population density (compact versus...