Africa's Silk Road Broadman, Harry G; Isik, Gozde
2006, 11-02-2006, 2007
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China and India's new-found interest in trade and investment with Africa - home to 300 million of the globe's poorest people and the world's most formidable development challenge - presents a ...significant opportunity for growth and integration of the Sub-Saharan continent into the global economy. Africa's Silk Road finds that China and India's South-South commerce with Africa is about far more than natural resources, opening the way for Africa to become a processor of commodities and a competitive supplier of goods and services to these countries - a major departure from its long established relations with the North. A growing number of Chinese and Indian businesses active in Africa operate on a global scale, work with world-class technologies, produce products and services according to the most demanding standards, and foster the integration of African businesses into advanced markets. There are significant imbalances, however, in these emerging commercial relationships. These can be addressed through a series of reforms in all countries:"At-the-border" reforms, such as elimination of China and India's escalating tariffs on Africa's leading exports, and elimination of Africa's tariffs on certain inputs that make exports uncompetitive "Behind-the-border" reforms in Africa, to unleash competitive market forces and strengthen its basic market institutions "Between-the-border" improvements in trade facilitation mechanisms to decrease transactions costs Reforms that leverage linkages between investment and trade, to allow African businesses to participate in global production networks that investments by Chinese and Indian firms can generate.
G7: Balance security and collaboration Broadman, Harry G.; Abdallah, Chaouki
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
06/2022, Letnik:
376, Številka:
6599
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Increased government scrutiny of cross-border university research relationships, tightened export controls on technologies, and strengthened national regimes regulating technology-related foreign ...direct investment are now priorities for most democracies. These policy changes are motivated by the common goal of shoring up economic and national security. But the approaches are neither uniform nor harmonized, even among the relatively homogeneous G7 nations, undermining cross-border research and development (R&D) collaboration. When the leaders of G7 meet in late June in Schloss Elmau, Germany, they should make it a priority to coordinate controls on knowledge flows and technology. They need to act together to demonstrate how democracies can counter illicit activities for acquiring technologies.
Capitalizing on the G7 Research Compact Broadman, Harry G; Guile, Bruce R; Delpy, David T ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
2021-Nov-26, 2021-11-26, 20211126, Letnik:
374, Številka:
6571
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Rules for S&T collaboration should be integrated with trade and investment agreements.
As the world marketplace becomes ever more globalized, much is at stake for the prosperity of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Central Asia as the regions transition process continues ...through its second decade. Understanding the underlying dynamics shaping the contours and most salient impacts of international integration that have emergedand likely to emerge prospectivelyin the region is thus a crucial challenge for the medium term economic development agenda, not only for policymakers in the countries on themselves, but also for their trading partners, the international financial institutions, the donor community and the future of the world trading system as a whole. This book addresses this challenge.
"After the 1998 Russian economic crisis, there are new opportunities for sustained growth in many countries of the former Soviet Union. Against this backdrop, the authors of this book analyze the ...dynamics of macroeconomic and structural developments in Eastern Europe and Russia, with special attention paid to problems of international and national integration, ""Dutch disease"" and natural resource dependency, and distortions in institutional reforms. The analysis also sheds light on how these problems have implications for cooperation among OECD-countries. A critical focus is on institutional adjustment and learning, human capital formation, trade and foreign investment. The political economy challenges of stability and growth in the region are highlighted. New empirical findings and comparative policy analysis - including in the field of natural resource policy - are major elements in this publication."
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has played a major role in China's push towards a market-oriented economy. From the advent of reform in 1978 to 1995, China has received $128.1 billion in FDI. ...However, while China's record in attracting foreign capital in the past decade has been impressive, potential problems exist. First, the pattern of FDI in China is highly geographically concentrated. Of the total amount of FDI that China has received since 1989, the coastal areas' share has been over 90%. Equally important is that the sectoral composition of FDI within China is uneven. The lion's share of FDI has been concentrated in the real estate sector, especially hotels and other tourism-related projects. Although much has been written describing China's overall achievement in attracting foreign investment and the general pattern of Chinese FDI, little work has been done analyzing quantitatively the geographical and sectoral attributes of such investment. The locational and sectoral determinants of FDI within China are assessed empirically. An overview is presented of the recent trend in the flow and stock of Chinese FDI, placing it in the worldwide and regional contexts.
While many industrial firms in Russia have undergone ownership change, relatively few have competitively restructured. This paper, using survey and other data, suggests much of Russian industry is ...immune from robust competition due to seller/buyer concentration in select markets, a high degree of vertical integration, and geographic segmentation. Regulatory constraints protect incumbent firms from entrants, both domestic and foreign. The absence of new businesses is striking. Restructuring anti-competitive structures and reducing barriers to entry should be key items in Russia's post-privatization program, and the paper sketches out a reform agenda. The nascent rules-based framework for competition policy should be strengthened to reduce discretion, increase transparency and enhance accountability.
The state industrial sector is the Achilles heel of China's otherwise remarkable economic performance over the past two decades. Most other countries in transition from socialism have transformed ...SOEs into commercial entities through systematic, market‐driven restructuring and privatisation to become more efficient and competitive. In China, a series of innovative, if often administrative, insitutional reforms since 1978 have begun to achieve the Chinese authorities' goal of ‘separating governemtn from business.’ But the Chinese State still maintains ownership of key enterprises, and government agencies carry out shareholder functions typically performed by private owners in a market economy. Although privatisation and restructuring of SOEs is occurring, it mostly pertains to small and medium sized firms. For the principal businesses, by contrast, the creation of large state enterprise groups and holding companies (and experiments in other forms of ‘state asset management’) have become the main form of restructuring. Today, China's SOEs still account for more than one‐quarter of national production, two‐thirds of total assets, more than half of urban employment and almost three‐quarters of investment. While direct budgetary subsidies have declined, explicit and implicit subsidies are still making their way to prop up loss‐making SOEs through the financial system and other routes. At the same time, SOEs are still producing non‐marketable products, resulting in a sizeable inventory overhang. These inefficiencies and distortions represent a drain on the country's resources and thus present a challenge to the Chinese leadership for reform. This paper sheds light on these challenges by analysing the incentives and constraints on China's SOE reform programme. Four critical aspects of the reforms are highlighted and evaluated against the backdrop of international experience: clarification of property rights; establishment of large group/holding companies and other new organisational structures; improved corporate governance incentives; and implementation of international financial accounting and auditing practices. The paper concludes with policy recommendations.
The underlying economic landscape in much of Sub-Saharan Africa has fundamentally changed over the past decade and a half. For the first time in Africa's modern economic history, a large portion of ...the continent has been registering uninterrupted economic growth. This record of economic performance is indicative of the fact that an increasing portion of Sub-Saharan Africa is presenting significantly profitable opportunities for new investments and/or expansion of existing investments. Multinational corporations from countries in the South, most notably China and India, have been far quicker to appreciate - and to capitalize on - these changes than have their counterparts from the North (Broadman 2007). In fact, not only have Chinese and Indian firms, but also Brazilian, Middle Eastern, and Russian businesses have begun to substantially increase their investments in Africa (Broadman 2008). These investments are all occurring despite the fact that there is a deeply held perception that Africa is a highly risky, if not a dangerous, place to do business. PUB ABSTRACT
Building Market Institutions in South Eastern Europe—a study of impediments to investment and private sector development in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav ...Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro—yields fundamentally new insights for improving the region’s business environment, economic development, and prospects for growth. It focuses on four core topics: Business competition and economic barriers to entry and exit Access to regulated utilities and services Corporate ownership, transparency of business accounts, and access to finance Mechanisms for commercial dispute resolutionEach topic is empirically investigated across all eight South Eastern European countries through the systematic use of data from multiple sources: Official data from each country in the region Results from two annual rounds of quantitative, firm-level surveys covering 1,600 firms Results from 40 originally developed enterprise-level business case studiesThe result is an innovative analysis of cross-country comparisons and the development of key policy challenges from a regional perspective. Building Market Institutions in South Eastern Europe, a collaborative effort between the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, offers important practical insights for all policymakers and observers concerned with the future of South Eastern Europe. It makes concrete recommendations for reforms that would ease the constraints on domestic and foreign investment, an essential step in sustaining growth and reducing poverty in the region.
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