Africa's Silk Road Broadman, Harry G; Isik, Gozde
2006, 11-02-2006, 2007
eBook, Book
Open access
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.
The government of Bolivia seeks to reinvigorate the nontraditional export sector as part of its national development strategy. This Country Study investigates the role that trade should play in ...Bolivias development strategy, given the countrys rich resource endowment, and examines the lessons of Bolivias integration into the global economy. Considering the past links between trade and Bolivias economy, the study analyzes the impact of different scenarios on growth, employment, trade flows, and poverty; it also evaluates barriers to higher export competitiveness and constraints on exporting firms. The study concludes that preferential access to world markets is necessary but not sufficient for success in nontraditional exports. Efficient services are necessary to reduce exporters costs, and the government should be more proactive in laying the foundation for export diversification, increasing the effectiveness of institutions, and addressing impediments to crossborder trade.
This paper examines the structural competitiveness of oil-rich economies in sub-Saharan Africa relative to other major oil-exporting developing countries, and investigates reasons for systematic ...differences in the non-oil export performance across these economies. The analysis reveals that oil-rich Africa lags behind other oil-exporters in terms of diversification, global market share and the overall investment climate. The poor performance of their nonoil sector can be largely attributed to weak infrastructure and institutional quality. The results also show that institutional quality is a significant determinant of the extent to which oil abundance affects the competitiveness of the non-oil sector; thereby explaining the divergent experiences of oil-rich economies across the world. This implies that oil wealth does not necessarily weaken the non-oil tradable sector; countries may mitigate the impact of Dutch disease and benefit from oil booms if revenues are used prudently to reduce oil dependence.
Sub-Saharan Africa continues to record strong economic growth, despite the weaker global economic environment. Regional output rose by 5 percent in 2011, with growth set to increase slightly in 2012, ...helped by still-strong commodity prices, new resource exploitation, and the improved domestic conditions that have underpinned several years of solid trend growth in the region's low-income countries. But there is variation in performance across the region, with output in middle-income countries tracking more closely the global slowdown and with some sub-regions adversely affected, at least temporarily, by drought. Threats to the outlook include the risk of intensified financial stresses in the euro area spilling over into a further slowing of the global economy and the possibility of an oil price surge triggered by rising geopolitical tensions.
This paper analyses the evolution of Chile's trade between 1990 and 2007, studying in particular the impact of trade liberalization in addition to traditional price and demand determinants. The ...results show that export and import flows are mainly responsive to external and domestic demand, and less so to relative prices, although there is a small impact on imports. In addition, the analysis suggests that trade liberalization may have played a role in increasing exports and imports. Estimations of trade elasticities for other countries in Latin America tend to confirm the results found for Chile.
We consider the effect of export sophistication on economic performance by appealing to regional variation within one single country (China) over the 1997–2009 period. We find evidence in support of ...Hausmann, Hwang and Rodrik (2007), in that regions specializing in more sophisticated goods subsequently grow faster. We find substantial variation in export sophistication at the province and prefecture level, controlling for the level of development, and that this sophistication in turn drives growth. Our results suggest that these gains are limited to the ordinary export activities undertaken by domestic firms: no direct gains result from either processing trade activities or foreign firms, even though these are the main contributors to the global upgrading of China's exports. As such, the extent of assembly trade and foreign entities should be distinguished in order to measure the true movement in a country's technology and the contribution of exports to economic growth.
5-methylcytosine (m
C) is a post-transcriptional RNA modification identified in both stable and highly abundant tRNAs and rRNAs, and in mRNAs. However, its regulatory role in mRNA metabolism is still ...largely unknown. Here, we reveal that m
C modification is enriched in CG-rich regions and in regions immediately downstream of translation initiation sites and has conserved, tissue-specific and dynamic features across mammalian transcriptomes. Moreover, m
C formation in mRNAs is mainly catalyzed by the RNA methyltransferase NSUN2, and m
C is specifically recognized by the mRNA export adaptor ALYREF as shown by in vitro and in vivo studies. NSUN2 modulates ALYREF's nuclear-cytoplasmic shuttling, RNA-binding affinity and associated mRNA export. Dysregulation of ALYREF-mediated mRNA export upon NSUN2 depletion could be restored by reconstitution of wild-type but not methyltransferase-defective NSUN2. Our study provides comprehensive m
C profiles of mammalian transcriptomes and suggests an essential role for m
C modification in mRNA export and post-transcriptional regulation.
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the nature of the relationship between export customer responsiveness and export growth.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses primary data obtained ...by questioning over 200 exporting firms. The model constructed predicts the export growth of those firms with export customer responsiveness data, together with a variety of moderator and control variables. The model is assessed using multiple regression.FindingsExporters with higher levels of export customer responsiveness often have higher export sales growth rates than those with lower levels of export customer responsiveness, but not always. For some firms, the opposite is true, such that those with lower levels of export customer responsiveness outperform those with higher levels.Originality/valueThe study is the first to provide export decision-makers with empirically grounded recommendations regarding (1) when it is advisable to have high export customer responsiveness levels and (2) those situations when firms may benefit from having lower export customer responsiveness levels.
PDF
