Connecting Landlocked Developing Countries to Markets: Trade Corridors in the 21st Century

This book aims to help the policymaker and development community in general to understand the nature of the problems and policy dilemmas that landlocked countries face to trade with the rest of the World. This volume presents an important breakthrough in the literature, by focusing on a new conceptual framework that challenges the previous paradigm based on physical infrastructure and state-led access solutions, embodied in many treaties. By recognizing that the main access problems for landlocked countries occur in the territory of the transit country, this volume provides a new approach to understand the set of incentives that drive the political economy and shape the institutions governing goods' transit along corridors. Overall, the policy levers available to overcome these barriers are based on universally applied principles, recognizing the need for re-engineering current transit regimes which have been implemented with little success outside Europe. A risk-approach to border control and technology use, along with trust building between private operators and public agencies, all point toward the need to encourage and formally recognize higher-quality trucking companies. Meanwhile, other modes of transportation represent an alternative to road transit, but they also entail disadvantages, suggesting that their role is likely to remain limited to niche segments, specific commodities and exceptional market circumstances.