Investment Climate andInternational Integration

Dollar, David ; Hallward-Driemeier, Mary ; Mengistae, Taye

World Bank, Washington, D.C.

关键词: AVERAGE LEVEL;    AVERAGE PRODUCTIVITY;    AVERAGE TARIFF;    AVERAGE TARIFF RATES;    BANKING SECTOR;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-3323
RP-ID  :  WPS3323

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Drawing on recently completed firm-levelsurveys in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Honduras, India,Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Peru, this paper investigates therelationship between investment climate and internationalintegration. These standardized surveys of large, randomsamples of firms in common sectors reveal how firmsexperience bottlenecks and delays in hard infrastructuresuch as power and telecom as well as in soft infrastructuresuch as customs administration. The authors focus primarilyon measures of the time or monetary cost of differentbottlenecks (e.g., days to clear goods through customs, daysto get a telephone line, sales lost to power outages). Formany of these costs, the obstacles are lower in China thanin the South Asian or Latin American countries. There isalso systematic variation across cities within countries.The authors estimate a probit function for the probabilitythat a randomly chosen firm is foreign-invested and aseparate probit for the probability that a randomly chosenfirm is an exporter. These measures of internationalintegration are higher where investment climate is better.For locations to take advantage of opportunities in theinternational market, they need good infrastructure and asound regulatory environment. The interaction of opennessand sound investment climate creates a good environment forinvestment and production. This paper helps explain whyChina has been so successful over the past decade, both interms of integration and of rapid growth, while othercountries have had varied success.