WPS8547
Policy Research Working Paper 8547
Infrastructure, Value Chains,
and Economic Upgrades
Xubei Luo
Xuejiao Xu
Poverty and Equity Global Practice
August 2018
Policy Research Working Paper 8547
Abstract
Infrastructure development is critical to delivering growth, the bottlenecks in infrastructure is a necessary condition
reducing poverty, and addressing broader development goals. to provide a window of opportunity for an economy to
This paper surveys the literature on the linkages between develop following its comparative advantage. With the right
infrastructure investment and economic growth, discusses conditions, good infrastructure can support an economy,
the role of infrastructure in participation in global value particularly a less developed economy, to reap the benefits
chains and supporting economic upgrades, highlights the of participation in global value chains to upgrade the eco-
challenges that the least developed countries face, and pro- nomic structure.
vides policy recommendations. It suggests that addressing
This paper is a product of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide
open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research
Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/research. The authors may be contacted at xluo@
worldbank.org.
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names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those
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Produced by the Research Support Team
Infrastructure, Value Chains, and Economic Upgrades
Xubei Luo1, Xuejiao Xu2
1. Poverty Global Practices, The World Bank, Washington D.C., USA, xluo@worldbank.org
2. Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington D.C.,
USA, xuejiaoxu@gwu.edu
JEL classification: H54; O40, F14, F60
Keywords
Infrastructure gap; economic growth; structural upgrades; least developed countries; global
value chains
Infrastructure, Value Chains, and Economic Upgrades
Xubei Luo and Xuejiao Xu*
.
An accessible, affordable, and reliable infrastructure network is crucial for development. It is
necessitous for powering business, lowering transactions costs, improving market access, and
improving the efficiency of other productive factors; and it is prerequisite for providing people
with access to important services like education and health care, connecting workers to their jobs,
and sharing the fruits of growth in an equitable manner. In the global arena, infrastructure is
essential for participation in value chains to upgrade economic structure. As argued in the World
Bank Report Transformation through Infrastructure (2012a), infrastructure development is critical
to delivering growth, reducing poverty, and addressing broader development goals.1
This paper surveys the literature of the linkages between infrastructure investment and economic
growth, discusses the role of infrastructure in participation in global value chains and supporting
economic upgrades, highlights the challenges faced by the least developed countries, and
provides policy suggestions. It suggests that addressing the bottlenecks in infrastructure is a
necessary condition to provide a window of opportunity for an economy to develop following its
comparative advantage. With the right conditions, good infrastructure can support an economy,
particularly a less developed economy, to reap the benefit through participation in global value
chains to upgrade the economic structure.
Infrastructure investment and economic growth
Infrastructure includes hard (tangible) infrastructure and soft (intangible) infrastructure. Hard
infrastructure often refers to the transport system (such as roads, airports, port facilities, and rail),
public utilities (such as energy, water supply and sewer, and irrigation), communication network
(such as telecommunication and broadband), and social infrastructure (such as schools and
hospitals). Soft infrastructure often refers to matters related to efficiency, such as institutions and
regulations.2
There is a vast literature on the contribution of infrastructure and public capital to aggregate
productivity and growth. Arrow and Kurz (1970) examined the relationship between
infrastructure investment and productivity using the Ramsey type exogenous growth model and
*
Xubei Luo is an economist at the World Bank, Xuejiao Xu is a graduate from George Washington
University. The authors would like to thank participants at the 4th New Structural Economics International
Conference at Peking University for comments. Special thanks go to Justin Lin, Yong Wang, Shang‐Jin Wei,
Yanrui Wu, Jianye Yan, and Juzhong Zhuang, for useful discussions and suggestions. 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.
1
See World Bank (2012a).
2
See more from Lin (2011), Bottini, Coelho, and Kao (2012), and Ismail and Mahyideen (2015).
2
found that the volume of public investment conditions marginal productivity. Barro (1990)
included pubic capital in the framework of the endogenous growth model and concluded that the
growth and savings rate increase initially with productive services, but subsequently decline, while
the two rates were negatively associated with consumption services. Futagami et al. (1993)
extended Barro’s method, by adding private capital stock into the endogenous growth model, and
showed that long‐run economic growth is maximized when the income tax rate equals the output
elasticity of public capital. World Bank (2012a) showed a positive correlation between estimated
infrastructure investments (per capita) and the level of development (proxied by GDP per capita)
using data from 104 countries (Figure 1). WEF (2013) suggested that, if every country improved
border administration, transport and communications infrastructure, and related services
halfway to the world’s best practices, global GDP could increase by US$2.6 trillion (4.7%) and
exports by US$1.6 trillion (14.5%).
Figure: 1 Infrastructure investment and economic development
Cited from World Bank (2012a), Transformation through infrastructure.
Note: Total investments in infrastructure consist of: (a) new investment resulting from the variation in infrastructure stocks between
2000 and 2005, valued at unit costs; and (b) requirements for maintenance, resulting from multiplying stocks of 200 by a
depreciation rate. Infrastructure sectors include paved and unpaved roads, rails, ports, electricity generation and electrification,
fixed and mobile communications, and water supply and sanitation. The curve is obtained by a three‐degree polynomial trend
There is an indication that infrastructure is closely associated with economic development,
while the empirical evidence of the causality between infrastructure and productivity growth
remains inconclusive and the marginal productivity of infrastructure varies across countries. De
la Fuente (2010) provided a survey of the literature with a thorough discussion of the
econometric complications. Aschauer (1989) found that the slowdown of the investment rate in
public infrastructure leads to the deceleration of private‐sector total factor productivity in the
U.S. since the early 1970s. Wylie (1996) used a similar approach as Aschauer's analysis and
found high returns of infrastructure investment to productivity in Canada’s goods‐sector, and
complementarity of infrastructure with goods‐sector capital and labor inputs during 1964‐1991.
Fernald (1999) accessed the links between road services and productivity and found that
industries that intensively used roads often witnessed a faster productivity growth increase
when the stock of roads increased, using industry data in the U.S. between 1953‐1989. Canning
and Bennathan (2000), using an aggregate production function, found that infrastructure, as
complementary to physical and human capital, enhances production capacity. Röller and
Waverman (2001) found a positive causal link between telecommunication infrastructure and
economic development using data from 21 OECD countries spanning the years 1970‐1990 with a
micro‐model endogenizing telecommunication investment and a macro‐growth equation, after
3
controlling for country‐specific fixed effects and nonlinear effects caused by network
externalities. Albiman and Sulong (2016) showed that mobile phone and internet were main
economic growth drivers in the long run using data in 45 Sub‐Saharan African countries from
1990 to 2014.
Infrastructure can contribute to productivity and economic growth through several channels:
Infrastructure can lower production costs. Seethepalli et al. (2008) found that
telecommunications, electricity, roads, water, and sanitation have significant positive
impact on economic growth in East Asia, after controlling human capital and total
investment. Similarly, Straub and Terada‐Hagiwara’s study (2010) showed the growth
rate of these infrastructure stocks promotes economic growth in most countries in East
Asia and South Asia. For production, electricity is often a major constraint in developing
countries. Dollar et al. (2005) showed that the inconsistent power supply has strong
negative impacts on productivity using firm level survey data. Firms often have to rely on
their own generators to supplement the unreliable public electricity supply. However, the
cost of maintaining a power generator is often high and burdensome, especially for small
and medium firms, where a large share of the poor and vulnerable are employed. Hallaert
et al. (2011) found electricity supply is a major constraint to trade expansion in developing
countries.
Infrastructure can lower transactions costs. Limao and Venables (2001) showed poor
infrastructure accounts for more than 40 percent of transport costs. Radelet and Sachs
(1998) found that a doubling of the shipping cost is associated with slower annual growth
of slightly more than half of one percentage point. Cordella and Simon (1997) found that
infrastructure can reduce transaction costs (including the costs for gathering information,
evaluating alternative options, negotiating, and contracting) by reducing time and cost in
communication and information exchange and by flattening the organizational structure
to reduce information flux and coordination needs. Lakshmanan (2011) suggested that
time and cost savings due to transport infrastructure improvement can better link
product and factor markets, promote inter‐regional trade and specialization, increase
returns to scale, and reallocate economic activities.
Infrastructure can increase total factor productivity. Good infrastructure can increase
efficiency of conventional inputs (Duggal et al., 1999). Interconnections and
complementarities between infrastructures help improve service efficiency and support
innovative technologies adoption (Bottini et al., 2012). Based on a large‐scale firm‐level
survey data from China, Wan and Zhang (2017) explored the causality between
infrastructure and firm total factor productivity, and concluded that roads,
telecommunication servers, and cable promote firm productivity. In addition to the
conventional productivity effect, Fay et al. (2011) found that infrastructure is likely to
condition the efficiency of many key areas of productive factors, such as the costs of
investment adjustment, the durability of private capital, and both demand for and
supply of health and education services. Dam (2007) showed that the rule of law is
important to unlocking the developing world's full growth potential.
Infrastructure services can “crowd in” other productive inputs. Calderón and Servén
(2014) suggested an increase in infrastructure stock or improvement in infrastructure
4
can indirectly crowd in other inputs owing to the accompanying rise in their marginal
productivity, and this indirect effect may take place instantaneously (for variable inputs
in elastic supply) or over time (for fixed inputs such as human and non‐infrastructure
physical capital). Infrastructure, being a key element of the business environment,
conditions individual firms’ transaction and marginal return on investment.3 Wheeler
and Mody (1992) and Richaud et al. (1999) provided evidence that infrastructure can
crowd in foreign direct investment, an important element for growth in less developed
countries. Eden and Kraay (2014) found that an extra dollar of public investment can
raise private investment by roughly two dollars, and output by 1.5 dollars, based on data
from 39 low‐income countries.
The magnitude of contribution of infrastructure to productivity and output varies. Various
factors are at play. Calderón et al. (2015) found that the long‐run output elasticity of
infrastructure ranges from 0.07 to 0.1, using a synthetic index combining power, transport and
telecommunications infrastructure as one of the inputs in a production function, based on a
large data set covering 88 countries spanning the years 1960–2000. Their results suggest that
the marginal productivity of infrastructure is associated with the ratio of aggregate
infrastructure to output. Calderón and Servén (2008), drawing from data of 100 countries over
1960‐2005, found that infrastructure development makes, on average, a smaller contribution to
growth in Sub‐Saharan Africa than in other regions – just 0.7 percent per annum. This is related
to the severe deterioration of the quality of infrastructure services in the region ‐ while the
expansion in infrastructure stocks raises the growth rate by 1.2 percent per annum, the
deterioration of the quality of infrastructure services reduces the growth rate by 0.5 percent per
annum. Bottini et al. (2012) suggested that enhancing service efficiency and supporting
innovative technologies adoption can improve the contribution of infrastructure to total factor
productivity through better interconnection and stronger complementarities.
The relationship between infrastructure and economic growth is not linear. Hurlin (2006) found
that returns to infrastructure exhibit threshold effects and that the highest marginal
productivity of investment is found when a network is sufficiently developed but not completely
saturated. For example, road construction may have limited effects until it links several
locations. After the establishment of a minimum road network, the marginal productivity is high
for the new road construction extending the network before congestions kick in (Fernald, 1999).
Henckel and McKibbin (2017) pointed out that the economic benefit from transport
infrastructure is nonlinear because of network externalities, reflecting the decreasing benefits
from additional highway construction to an existing efficient transport network.
Telecommunications investment has strong externality. A subscriber’s welfare increases with
the increase of the number of people who have access to the network, until reaching the
saturation point. Röller and Waverman (2001) found that the impact of telecommunications
infrastructure on output is substantially higher in countries where penetration approaches
universal coverage.
Infrastructure and global value chains
3
See Lin, J. Y. (2011).
5
Infrastructure development includes two main stages. The first stage is the development of
transport infrastructure. It significantly lowers transport costs and made it feasible to spatially
separate production and consumption. Production becomes specialized and clustered in large
scale (Florida, 2005). The second stage is the development of communication infrastructure. It
significantly lowers coordination costs and makes it feasible for firm specific knowledge and
know‐how to be shared across national borders (Baldwin, 2011).
In today’s world, with the drastic decline of transport costs and communication costs, the
potential contribution of infrastructure to productivity and growth is magnified. The
infrastructure improvement can not only contribute to growth through lowering production
costs and transaction costs, increasing total factor productivity, and crowding in other
productive factors, but also change the boundary of production and reshape the economy
(Lewis and Bloch, 1998; McCann and Shefer, 2004). Yu (2017) found that infrastructure
improvement plays a crucial role in the increasing economic cooperation and integration
between East Asian countries. The transportation and communication technology revolution has
redefined the function of time and distance. The interconnectedness across firms or sectors
multiplies and intensifies. 4
The separation of stages of production, or tasks instead of the full products, which is profitable
due to the large differences of wages, land prices, and advantageous policies between
developed and developing countries, opens new doors for developing countries to specialize in
specific niches of the global value chains. It enables an economy to develop its comparative
advantages, including latent comparative advantages, potentially at an earlier stage through
focusing on a special niche in the global value chains.5 Countries become increasingly
interdependent through supply chain trade, as they specialize in tasks and business functions
rather than products. Products at different stages of value added may be imported, exported,
and re‐exported multiple times. In 2009, world exports of intermediate goods exceeded the
combined export values of final and capital goods for the first time, representing 51% of non‐
fuel merchandise exports (WTO and IDE‐JETRO, 2011).
Global value chain integration can increase domestic value added. As indicated by Kowalski et al.
(2015), global value chain participation can increase domestic value added embodied in a
country’s exports, enhance the sophistication of the export bundle, and improve diversification
of export products. Weinberger and Lumpkin (2007) stated that integrating into the horticulture
global value chain offers opportunities for the least developed countries to alleviate poverty by
increasing income and creating employment. Kummritz et al. (2017) found both backward and
forward global value chain participation can lead to growth of domestic value added, based on a
data set covering 61 countries and 34 industries between 1995 and 2011. Gonzalez (2016) found
that using foreign value added is one of the most important factors that contribute to growth in
domestic value added in exports. In ASEAN countries, the total domestic value added in exports
increased nearly four times during the period of 1995‐2011. According to the Global Value
Chains Development Report (World Bank et al., 2017), the information and communication
4
See Gereffi and Luo (2015) for more discussion.
5
See Lin and Monga (2010) and Lin (2012b) for a thorough discussion on the identification of comparative
advantages.
6
technology industry in the U.S. and China has experienced an increased rate of return in labor or
capital by participating in the global value chains.
The participation in global value chains can be a window of opportunities for developing
countries to move up the ladder in the production structure by specializing in the niches where
they have comparative advantage. Following the metaphor of “ladder” instead of a “chain” used
in a recent joint report by OECD, WTO and World Bank Group, “the disaggregation of production
into separate stages allows their firms not only to find their place on the ladder, but to move up
the rungs as their capabilities improve”.6 Entering global value chains is a way to "denationalize
comparative advantages", and it has the potential to enhance developing countries’ export
opportunities and their competitiveness (Del Prete et al., 2017). It allows developing countries
to specialize in narrow niches without the need of first building an entire value chain from
scratch, as other countries, such as Japan and the Republic of Korea, experienced in the last
century. A small developing country with abundant unskilled labor can join the value chain of
garment manufacturing, specializing in only one small niche such as producing buttons before
they can have the entire assembly line.
Participation in global value chains can therefore encourage upward movement by providing the
platform to reward skills, learning, and innovation. Gereffi and Fernandez‐Stark (2016) drew an
upgrading trajectory in a global value chain, in which countries follow the steps of entering the
value chain first by offering the most basic products or services, then providing more
sophisticated business, subsequently to knowledge activities, offering a large spectrum of
products or services, and finally specializing in vertical industries. Costa Rica has experienced
product upgrading in medical devices value chains, as shown by Bamber and Gereffi (2013), with
its higher tech medical devices accounting for more than half of total medical device exports in
2011, compared with 90% shared by low‐tech disposable devices in 2002. Simultaneously, the
country also witnessed significant growth of FDI in higher‐level technology medical devices
sectors.
The potential benefit of tapping in the benefit of structural upgrading through the participation
in the value chains is large. Development is path dependent. Several economies, including
China, are moving up the value chain and releasing millions of labor intensive jobs (Lin, 2012a).
Seizing this opportunity to specialize in the niches following the latent comparative advantages
can set an economy on a right path of structural upgrades. Successful cases can be found in
countries such as Chile in exporting engineering services related to mining, India in exporting
pharmaceutical R&D, and Uruguay in exporting sophisticated expertise on cattle traceability
(Gereffi and Fernandez‐Stark, 2016).
Improving infrastructure, including hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure, is a necessary
condition for reaping the benefit of the participation in the global value chains to upgrade the
economic structure. Reliable infrastructure to connect supply, efficient movement of goods and
services across borders, fast and reliable information transfer, and sufficiently low coordination
costs are prerequisites for participating in global value chains. Yi (2003) indicated that tariffs
have large and nonlinear impact on global trade, especially for semi‐finished goods in the value
6
See OECD, WTO, & World Bank Group. (2014).
7
chains as they need to cross borders several times. A recent Brookings report (World Bank et al.,
2017) showed a clear relationship between better logistics performance and deeper
involvement in global value chains using the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Indicator.
While not all countries with good logistics are deeply involved in global value chains, no
countries with poor logistics performance are central to global value chains (figure 2). According
to World Economic Forum (2014), well‐developed infrastructure not only reduces the distance
between regions but also integrates national markets and connects them to other economies.
The proximity of industries and businesses favors cost reduction and productivity improvement,
allowing firms in the region to share a similar labor pool and enjoy knowledge spillovers, and
enables further clustering and agglomeration (Fujita et al., 1999; Fujita and Thisse, 2013).
Figure 2: Relationship between the Logistics Performance Index and a centrality measure of
country involvement in global value chains
Cited from World Bank et al. (2017), and Diakantoni et al. (2017). Based on COMTRADE and World Bank data.
Note: The centrality indicator ranks a country’s centrality to global value chains, taking into account direct and indirect trade flows to
and from trading partners in the global production network.
Challenges for the least developed countries
Participating and competing in global value chains have become largely inevitable. Local firms
are collaborating directly or indirectly with foreign firms in the same industry or with their
upstream or downstream partners; at the same time, local firms are competing with a growing
number of foreign firms in the local as well as international markets. As the natural barriers of
distance to trade are diminished, countries may benefit or lose in the new global arena. To
survive, they need to improve product quality and efficiency of operations. Infrastructure
required for firms in least developed countries, which mainly target local markets with small
amount of transactions, used to be rudimentary. However, when they attempt to join the global
value chains, where business transactions are often long distance and large in quantity and
value, more sophisticated and various types of infrastructures become necessary (Lin, 2011).
8
Countries with poor infrastructure and distant to the economic centers can be marginalized and
locked from the opportunity of participating in the global value chains and, consequently, the
opportunity of upgrading the economic structure.
Developing countries face daunting challenges, ranging from the accessibility and quality of
transportation, telecommunication, and water supply, to institutions and regulations to
facilitate trade. The large infrastructure gaps, particularly for the least developed countries,
might deprive them of the opportunity to upgrade their economic structure through
participation in global value chains. World Bank (2017) indicated that the performance of Sub‐
Sahara Africa’s infrastructure currently ranks below all other developing regions: road density
has declined over the past 20 years in Africa, and only 35% of the population has access to
electricity, with rural access rates less than one‐third urban ones. The report estimated that
closing the infrastructure quantity and quality gap in Sub‐Sahara Africa relative to the best
performers in the world could increase the growth of GDP per capita in the region by 2.6
percent per year, or 1.7 percent per year if it were to close the gap with the median of the rest
of the developing world.
Transport costs can be prohibitively high. Transport costs, according to developing‐country
suppliers, remain the main obstacle to entering, establishing, or moving up in global value
chains (OECD and WTO, 2013). Transport prices for most African landlocked countries range
from 15 to 20 percent of import costs, approximately two to three times more than in most
developed countries (Teravaninthorn and Raballand, 2009). According to a recent IMF report
(IMF, 2015), the quality of infrastructure in Africa is about half that found elsewhere in the
world, credit‐to‐GDP ratios about a third of ratios elsewhere, and tariffs on average four times
higher than elsewhere. The slow and unpredictable land transport keeps most of Sub‐Saharan
Africa out of the higher value added segments of the value chains, including electronics (Christ
and Ferrantino, 2011).
Firms in the least developed countries are more likely to suffer from the burden of high
transaction costs. Besides conducive business environment and strong human capital, efficient
and reliable infrastructure services (including telecoms, internet, express service delivery, and
customs clearances) for coordinating the dispersed production become the essential condition
of the location choice in the production supply chain. With below‐average infrastructure quality
in most countries and the lack of regional co‐ordination of trade facilitation effort, South Asia
has the highest intra‐regional trade costs after the African regions (Kowalski et al., 2015).
Ahmed et al. (2010) noted high transaction costs are bottlenecks for South Asian countries to
promote regional or international trade, with 140 to 200 signatures required for trading
between India and Nepal, and over four days of waiting time for trucks to cross the border
between Bangladesh and India. Facilitating trade by focusing on publication of customs
information, notifications, advance rulings, documentation requirements, and international
standards can reduce trade costs mostly in less developed counties (Moïsé and Sorescu, 2013).
High logistic costs due to weak supply chains are often another barrier for the least developed
countries. Lacking reliable supply chains, firms in less developed countries encounter much higher
logistic costs and are virtually eliminated from just‐in‐time production. High inventory costs post
a double penalty for firms participating in global manufacturing value chains with extra logistics
9
costs on both inputs and exports. The inefficient and unreliable clearance processes could even
render the participation in global value chains impossible. As a result, the off‐shoring and
industrialization after the ICT revolution tend to concentrate in select parts of the developing
world, of which a significant share is in East Asia, followed by select countries in Latin America
and East and Central Europe.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) stand for the majority of firms in least development
countries. According to Gereffi and Fernandez‐Stark (2016), market access, training, and
collaboration and cooperation are major constraints for SMEs to sustainably enter value chains.
Infrastructure such as transportation and ICT conditions the linkages between producers and
buyers in value chains and affects the adoption of new technologies to meet the international
market requirements. Collaboration and cooperation refer to both horizontal coordination
between producers and vertical interaction between segments of the value chains, with the
former facilitating economies of scale and providing opportunities for more value added, and
the latter helping sharing knowledge along the chain and upgrading.
SMEs are even more vulnerable to supply chain inefficiencies compared with large firms. For
SMEs, related to their small scale, logistics costs are disproportionately higher—industrial firms
with fewer than 250 workers on average having logistics cost of some 15% of overall revenue for
the business unit, more than twice that of firms with over 250 workers (Straube et al., 2013).
Small exporters and importers tend to be more affected by a lack of transparency in clearance
processes. They have lower economies of scale, therefore higher inventory costs, which can be
punitively high in countries with poor logistics performance. Many of them are often forced to
confine their business activities to the geographical area close to their production site. For the
SMEs in remote areas, the lack of continuity of logistics services beyond the main gateway could
make access to global value chains prohibitive.
Evidence shows that insufficient infrastructure has put obstacles for less developed countries to
integrate into global value chains and upgrade to higher segments on the chains. According to
Gereffi (2015), in some Central American countries, inadequate infrastructure investment in wet
processing plants limited the abilities of small producers to produce premium coffee,
consequently losing the opportunity to capture the price premiums in the global value chain. A
report from AfDB et al. (2014) suggested that many African countries suffer from insufficient
infrastructure. Lack of infrastructure and burdensome border procedures, accompanied with
geographical remoteness, mean that in countries in Sub‐Saharan African, on average it takes 38
days to import and 32 days for exporting across borders. As a result, firms face high costs and
uncertainty of supply (World Bank, 2012b; Kowalski et al., 2015). Poor infrastructure, especially
lack of access to energy, and inadequate skilled workforce are the main barriers for Burkina Faso
to participate in the global value chains. In the Republic of Congo, the economy has not been able
to build on the comparative advantages in natural resources and move up the value chains due
to the lack of decent infrastructure, such as transport and energy, as well as the lagging
technology, less qualified labor, and uncongenial business environment. In Tunisia, while the
manufacturing sector has benefited from participation in the global value chain particularly, its
further development and structural upgrades are still handicapped by logistics, transport,
unbalanced distribution of information and communication technologies, and technology
transfers.
10
The less developed countries with underdeveloped infrastructure, low investment rates, and
low per‐capita incomes can experience a boost in trade flows and benefit from infrastructure
development. The development experiences in Africa and Asia, such as light‐manufacturing in
Ethiopia, horticulture in Kenya, readymade garments in Cambodia, and textiles in Pakistan have
already highlighted these countries’ tremendous potential for productive job creation, providing
they tackle the “hard” and “soft” infrastructure constraints to help realize this latent
comparative advantage.
Conclusions
Improving infrastructure to meet the demand in today’s economy is a must. The demand for
infrastructure includes not only the traditional facilities but also the new ones that better respond
to the rapidly evolving needs and provide quicker and more reliable services. While the
“traditional” infrastructure, such as roads, railways, electricity, water and sanitation, is still
fundamental, “new” infrastructure, such as highways, high‐speed trains, and broad‐band internet
has become necessary for an economy to fully participate in the global value chains and to move
up the ladder of the economic structure.
Infrastructure is not everything, but without good infrastructure, most potential will be limited.
Improving infrastructure is not only important for growth by boosting firm performance, but also
facilitating public services delivery and contributing to inclusiveness and long‐term development.
The lack of access to basic services undermines living standards for poor people and limits their
ability to materialize their full potentials. The inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcomes
intertwine and perpetuate and prevent poor people from accessing infrastructure services.
Alesina et al. (1999) argued that more unequal societies devote less effort to the provision of
public goods, including infrastructure. Estache et al. (2002) showed that income inequality
adversely affects access to the internet, which aggravates the information asymmetry and
deprives the poor from equal opportunities. Some studies, for example Gonzalvez (2016),
suggested that participation in global value chains can be an engine of job creation: forward global
value chain jobs—domestic jobs linked to the production of intermediate products traded within
value chains—have grown over six times faster than total jobs in 1996‐2011.
Infrastructure is a necessary but not sufficient condition for growth. The extent to which
infrastructure improvement contributes to growth of a specific industry or location depends on
their specific characteristics and the business environment that they are in. To the extent that
suboptimal infrastructure investment constrains other investment, it constrains growth
(Newbery, 2012). More infrastructure may not necessarily cause more growth if the binding
constraints lie elsewhere or the type or quality of infrastructure investment does not match the
demand.7 Building a bridge to nowhere will not add any value.
The constraints of infrastructure, or the benefit from the improvement of a specific type of
infrastructure, vary across industries and firms as well as across regions in the same country. For
example, a new expressway linking two locations might benefit one more than the other
7
See more discussions in Canning, D., & Pedroni, P. (2008).
11
depending on their production and geo‐economic structures. Improvement in connectivity and
market accessibility might lead to stronger clustering and agglomeration, which tends to favor
the economic centers more than the periphery. Similarly, simplification of the customs
clearance might benefit firms specializing in foreign trade or the economy in general, but at the
same time raise the competition for those engaging in import substitution industries or focusing
on the domestic market.
Infrastructure is not a sufficient condition for benefiting from participation in the global value
chains, and participation in the global value chain is not a sufficient condition for structural
upgrades. The “smile curve” is deep as value added is high at the pre‐ and post‐manufacturing
stages. Based on a sample of more than 2 million firms in the European Union in 2015, the
empirical results from Rungi and Del Prete (2017) confirmed a nonlinear U‐shaped relationship at
firm‐level between the value added generated and position on a productive sequence. Developing
countries, given the mix of their factor endowment, often enter global value chains first at the
low value‐added stage (assembly or production stage) and subsequently seek to move towards
higher value‐adding activities. To what extent they can increase their domestic value‐added and
move up the ladder depends on a variety of factors. With good infrastructure, opportunity is there
but success is not guaranteed; however, without good infrastructure, the economy will certainly
be deprived of the opportunity to materialize its latent advantage at the global scale early on.
The public‐good nature of infrastructure calls for support from the governments, and partnership
between the public and private sectors in many areas is essential. When the infrastructure
investment crosses national borders, regional and global collaborations are essential. Concerted
efforts between national governments and regional or international development agencies can
play a crucial role. With the right conditions, infrastructure investment and economic growth can
reinforce each other: good infrastructure investments can accelerate growth, while growth itself
can generate greater demand for, and usually supply of, infrastructure.
Infrastructure is expensive and requires extensive maintenance. The fiscal burden can be high,
particularly for the less developed countries that face multiple challenges and at the same time
have the most urgent needs. Focusing the investment in infrastructure in special economic zones
or industrial parks can be a useful approach to jump start the process with limited resources.
China has spent over 5 percent of GDP over the past decades in infrastructure investment, cutting
transport costs and helping connect production centers to domestic and international consumers
(Huang, 2017). By substituting domestic for imported materials, China has been increasing the
domestic content of its exports (Kee and Tang, 2015), and has become the world’s factory from a
largely agrarian economy. The successful experience in China in the past decades shows that well‐
planned and well‐managed special economic zones with targeted investment promotion and
catalytic development financing can help to unleash latent comparative advantages and facilitate
integration and upgrading along the global value chains. Development in sectors where the
economy has comparative advantages can stimulate gradual and sustained upgrading in the value
chains and start the virtuous cycle building the ecosystem for more beneficial integration in the
value chain for the entire economy.
12
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