Geographical factors and transport infrastructure are two of the key determinants that influence international competitiveness. In this sense, the quality of such infrastructure and how widespread it is, the distribution and capacity of logistics facilities in a country, as well as the number of private operators and their degree of specialisation, all play an increasingly important role in the design of business strategies aimed at increasing a country's share of the international market. Until recently, however, availability and access to logistics services have been considered secondary factors when defining business competitiveness. This paper estimates an augmented gravity model of trade that specifically includes logistics and transport infrastructure indicators as explanatory variables. The model is estimated by using bilateral exports from 19 Spanish regions to 64 destinations (45 countries and 19 Spanish regions) with data for the period 2003 to 2007. The findings show that logistics is indeed important for the analysis of trade flows in goods and they highlight the importance of logistics measures at the regional level. In particular, the number, size and quality of logistics facilities positively influence export flows.

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The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

This paper focuses on the impact of maritime piracy on international trade. Piracy increases the cost of international maritime transport through an increase in insecurity regarding goods deliveries. Bilateral trade flows between the main European and Asian countries over the 1999 to 2008 period are used to estimate an augmented gravity model that includes various measures of piracy acts. We found robust evidence indicating that maritime piracy reduces the volume of trade; the effect of ten additional vessels hijacked being associated to an 11% decrease in exports. Consequently, the current cost of piracy in terms of international trade destruction is estimated at 24.5 billion dollars.

What factors explain the persistence and pervasiveness of corruption in certain parts of the world? In West Africa, many day-today transactions require the payment of bribes. Quantitative evidence on these bribes and their determinants is scarce. This paper sheds light on the level and the frequency of bribe payments in informal cross-border trade. It examines how bribes depend on the trade regime and on market structure. We rely on data from a survey of traders in Benin to estimate the determinants of bribe payments. We exploit variations in the trade regime across Benin's borders, as well as changes in trade restrictions over time and variations in route availability across space and time. We nd that reductions in trade barriers help to lower bribes, but do not eliminate them, with bribes remaining frequent in liberalized trade regimes. These results suggest that collusive corruption-used to circumvent regulations and taxes-coexists with coercive corruption, where ocials use their monopoly power to extract transfers from traders.

Large reductions in Arctic sea ice, most notably in summer, coupled with growing interest in Arctic shipping and resource exploitation have renewed interest in the economic potential of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). Two key constraints on the future viability of the NSR pertain to bathymetry and the future evolution of the sea ice cover. Climate model projections of future sea ice conditions throughout the rest of the century suggest that even under the most "aggressive" emission scenario, increases in international trade between Europe and Asia will be very low. The large inter-annual variability of weather and sea ice conditions in the route, the Russian toll imposed for transiting the NSR, together with high insurance costs and scarce loading/ unloading opportunities, limit the use of the NSR. We show that even if these obstacles are removed, the duration of the opening of the NSR over the course of the century is not long enough to offer a consequent boost to international trade at the macroeconomic level.

This paper investigates the determinants of maritime trade. It focuses in particular on the extent to which variations in trade--related costs between Asia and Europe help to explain the surge in Euro--Asian trade in eight of the most emblematic categories of products related to Asian success: textiles, footwear, confection, machinery, electronic products, vehicles, furniture and pharmaceutical products. In marked contrast to other studies that focus only on the determinants of total maritime trade, we decompose trade into two margins, as defined in Hummels and Klenow (2005): the number of different products exchanged (extensive margin) and the average value of each product (intensive margin). We estimate a trade augmented gravity model with trade cost factors for specific trade flows and industries and for both margins of trade (Hummels and Klenow, 2005). Several types of trade costs are considered, namely maritime transport costs, time to export/import, behind--the--border trade costs and distances. The main findings indicate that lower freight costs increase aggregate trade values mainly by increasing the average value of imported varieties, but also by increasing the number of products traded. Our findings suggest that political actions aimed at spurring competition and innovation in the maritime transport industry do have an impact on the volume and composition of international trade.