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Because trucks in Bangladesh and India are not allowed to operate across the border, cargo is transloaded at the border, and Indian trucks traveling between northeast India and the rest of India must go around Bangladesh through the Siliguri Corridor, which significantly increases transport and trade costs. This lack of integration means that it is more costly for Bangladesh and India to trade with each other than for either of them to trade with Europe. As a result, bilateral trade represents only about 10 percent of Bangladesh's trade and a mere 1 percent of India's trade. Connecting to Thrive: Challenges and Opportunities of Transport Integration in Eastern South Asia presents a collection of innovative technical analyses that show what is needed to achieve seamless connectivity in the region. The report explores the extent to which the Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) supports the cross-border operation of road transport services and identifies the gaps in the agreement that need to be addressed to improve its effectiveness. It assesses the potential shift of freight traffic to new routes and modes in eastern India and Bangladesh once the MVA is implemented and the potential impact of the MVA on wages, employment, and income in Bangladesh and India. It explores how the local impacts of a regional corridor could be enhanced in rural areas by improving access to markets along the corridors and how women's participation in export-oriented agriculture value chains could be improved to allow women to take advantage of improved regional connectivity. Connecting to Thrive will be of interest to policy makers, private sector practitioners, and academics with an interest in regional connectivity in eastern South Asia.

Regional Integration --- Route Choice --- Rural Markets --- Rural Roads --- Transloading --- Transport Mode Choice --- Women Empowerment

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The majority of services trade is currently transacted under the terms of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with increasingly ambitious provisions on crossborder trade and investment in services. This paper exploits novel and detailed information on the architecture and depth of services PTAs (the World Bank Deep Trade Agreements 2.0 database) to study which provisions, or policy configurations, characterise an effective agreement. The richness of policy information is crucial for being able to identify those aspects that matter most, namely an agreement's structure, its rules of origin for firms and natural persons, and provisions that ensure accountability. Ambitious provisions in these areas are associated with 15-65 percent higher bilateral trade, driven by regulation-intensive services. Services PTAs also lead to an increase in services value added sourced from PTA partners, through provisions that facilitate the exchange of capital and people. This finding sheds light on how services PTAs can affect the configuration of value chain trade.

Deep Trade Agreement --- International Economics and Trade --- International Trade and Trade Rules --- Preferential Trade Agreements --- Regional Integration --- Services Investment --- Services Trade --- Trade and Regional Integration --- Trade and Services --- Trade Finance and Investment --- Trade Liberalization --- Trade Policy --- Value Added

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Regional economic engagement within South Asia may gain increasing importance owing to several factors that are currently in play, including strategies to diversify global value chains and locate such value chains nearer home. These developments offer South Asia a chance to enhance its low levels of regional economic engagement and capitalize on significant unrealized development opportunities. This report shows that examining intraregional investment and knowledge connectivity enhances our understanding of the low levels of intraregional trade and limited regional value chains in South Asia. Creating a new and unique data set for South Asian investment, it provides a detailed and nuanced understanding of the drivers of outward investment, both regional and global, for South Asian firms. "Regional Investment Pioneers in South Asia" provides key considerations for policy makers in South Asia, which remain particularly relevant in the aftermath of the pandemic. First, it makes a case for regulatory relaxation of outward FDI regimes, based on new micro foundations, grounded in value chains. Second, it spells out details of smart inward FDI promotion techniques and investment facilitation. Third, it identifies distinct cross-border information-enhancing and network development activities. Fourth, it suggests that digital connectivity and continued interventions in reducing trade costs are warranted to increase investment as well as trade flows. There is particular scope to build on the digitalization initiatives in trade and investment facilitation taken during the pandemic. "Regional Investment Pioneers in South Asia" follows on, and is complementary to, the earlier World Bank report, "A Glass Half Full: the Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia."

Conglomerate --- Diapora Investment --- Exports --- FDI --- Firm --- Firm Dynamics --- Firm Entry --- Foreign Direct Investment --- Hetorogeneity --- Investment --- Networks --- Productivity --- Regional Integration --- Value Chain --- Commercial policy. --- Investments, Foreign.

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This paper examines the impact of preferential trade agreements on the duration of antidumping protection. It employs a two-step selection model where the first step accounts for the impact of preferential trade agreement membership on the original antidumping determination, and the second step estimates the impact of preferential trade agreement membership on the duration of duties. Several key findings emerge from the analysis. Most importantly, the duration of antidumping protection is significantly shorter for preferential trade agreement members, compared with targeted countries that are not preferential trade agreement members. The estimates imply that preferential trade agreement membership is associated with a 30 percent reduction in the duration of protection. Second, the impact on duration depends, in part, on whether the preferential trade agreement has rules specifically related to antidumping. On average, over all users and targeted countries, the impact on duration is about twice as large for preferential trade agreements with rules, compared with those with- out rules (and both have shorter duration than non-preferential trade agreement members). Third, the duration of antidumping measures has increased markedly over time, primarily due to cases in the right tail of the distribution. This is consistent with the widespread belief that the Uruguay Round's sunset review provisions did not produce the result that many World Trade Organization members sought, but it also reflects the growing fraction of cases targeting China. Although the rising fraction of cases against China partly explains why duration has increased, it does not explain the finding with respect to the impact of preferential trade agreements and duration.

Antidumping --- International Economics and Trade --- International Trade and Trade Rules --- Preferential Trade Agreements --- Protection Duration --- Trade and Regional Integration --- Trade Protection --- World Trade Organization

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This paper studies the effects of removing transport and trade barriers between Bangladesh and India on aggregate real income and the distribution of population and real income within both countries. The paper uses a spatial general equilibrium model calibrated to these two economies, along with road network travel time calculated using GPS data, to measure changes in economic outcomes given changes in trade costs across regions. The paper focuses on the Motor Vehicles Agreement between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal and full transport and trade integration between Bangladesh and India. The counterfactual exercises show that decreasing transport and trade barriers between Bangladesh and India can lead to up to a 7.6 percent increase in national real income for India and a 16.6 percent increase for Bangladesh.

Agglomeration Economies --- Cross-Border Trade --- Economic Integration --- International Economics and Trade --- International Trade and Trade Rules --- Regional Integration --- Spatial General Equilibrium --- Trade And Geography --- Trade and Regional Integration --- Trade and Services --- Trade and Transport --- Trade Corridor --- Transport --- Transport and Trade Logistics