Trade Logistics and Regional Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean

During the past few decades, the landscape of the world economy has changed. New trade patterns reflect the globalization of the supply chain and intra-industry trade, and increasing flows between neighboring countries and trading blocs with similar factor endowments. Similarly, the approach to production, trade, and transportation has evolved incorporating freight logistics as an important value-added service in global production. This integrated approach have become essential, and as such, both the trade agenda and freight logistics are beginning to converge providing an unparalleled opportunity for countries to deepen their integration with neighboring countries and their national performance in transport related services. Consequently, developing countries are finding themselves hard-pressed to adjust their policy agendas to take into account costs not covered in past rounds of trade negotiations. This paper focuses on the importance of freight logistics in trade facilitation measures, examines the transport and logistics cost in international trade, addresses logistics performance in Latin America and the Caribbean and regional initiatives to advance the integration process and finally, exchanges views on the potential for trade logistics to impact the regional agenda and to deepen integration.latin america caribbean trade; regional integration; infrastructure trade facilitation

Going for Growth; a Theoretical and Policy Framework

This paper introduces scenario planning as a tool to explore plausible developments for SMEs in the Netherlands until 2040. Globalization has resulted in the emergence of an increasingly borderless society with greater unrestricted movement of information, travel, and currency between countries. As policy and technological developments in the past few decades have spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment, and migration, new policy approaches in the economic, political, environmental, and social sphere will be necessary. On the national level, SMEs are acknowledged to play an important role in the economy serving as agent of change by their entrepreneurial activity, being the source of considerable innovative activity, stimulating industry evolution and creating an important share of the newly generated jobs. Entrepreneurship should therefore be promoted, but on a national level, since global development takes places in stages. Government policy, it is believed, can play a considerable role in facilitating entrepreneurship on a national scale. There is however great uncertainty on the scale of future bottlenecks and the economic conditions under which SMEs will need to develop. Scenarios can help map out possible changes and what effect they may have on national welfare.DYNREG

Regional E-government Readiness in Saudi Arabia: Challenges and Opportunities (The Case of Hail Region)

In the last decades, there has been an increase in the adoption of information technologies around the world. In the developed countries as well as some developing countries, governments have adopted information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance the access and delivery of government services to benefit citizens, businesses, industries, and employees. However, e-government represents a major alteration in the entire public sector structure, principles, culture and the means of carrying out business by making use of the potential of ICT as a device in the government organizations. Many governments around the world have presented electronic government as a way of reducing costs, advancing services for people and raising effectiveness and productivity in the public sector. Hence, e-government has been recognized as one of the main concerns for governments across the world. Though, the presentation of e-government is about a thorough modification within government and about the relationship between a government and its people. Therefore, the implementation of e-government raises significant technological, social, organizational and political issues which must be taken into consideration and treated cautiously by any government planning its implementation. However, there have been very few studies conducted to investigate, for example, the reasons for the slow progress in regional e-government programs since the introduction of the national e-government program in Saudi Arabia in 2005. Moreover, there is very little published research that emphasizes the factors inhibiting e-government initiatives in Saudi regions. Thus, this study is an attempt to explore and investigate empirically how e-government project is progressing regionally in Saudi Arabia. In addition, it identifies the various challenges and opportunities that regions face. The study used a qualitative case study by conducting 25 interviews with public sector employees in different positions from 5 government organizations in Hail city. Documents analysis was also utilized in this paper. The overall results indicated that e-government progress is still slow in Hail region, where most of the government agencies in this region are categorized to be progressing in the second stage. However, the comparison of e-government readiness between Hail, Riyadh and Madinah shows that Hail region is still away behind in the implementation of e-government services, while Riyadh and Madinah are generally classified to be progressing in the third stage (two-way service delivery). The study also indicated that there were some challenges that would hinder the implementation process of e-government adoption in Hail region. These challenges were categorized as technological, social, organizational and political. Technological challenges include (IT standards, security, privacy, accessibility, ICT infrastructure, and interoperability). However, social challenges include (awareness, transparency, e-literacy, trust, authentication, and culture). The results also showed some organizational challenges such as (strategy, change management, resistance to change, and records management). In addition to some political challenges comprising (leadership, legal and regulation issues, and funding issues). Some opportunities were found to help the organizations in Hail region to advance its e-government services such as (improving management and decision making process, organizing government business process, increasing collaboration among public organizations, increasing productivity, reducing operation cost, enhancing ICT infrastructure, increasing the exchange of data between organizations, improving the efficiency, fastening the transaction process and response, and developing new skills for employees). Generally, this paper could provide further research with knowledge about regional e-government readiness in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, it provides a comprehensive sight on recognizing the challenges and opportunities of e-government adoption for the benefit of similar nations

Factors and Impacts of Low Utilization of Internet: The Case of Arab Countries

The Arab countries are greatly behind in terms of their levels of Internet usage. The Arab countries are under pressures to adopt and promote digital transformation. Data in Arab countries are hard to get, resulting in paucity of understanding the factors that affect the use of Internet in Arab countries. This paper combines research from academic and major international organizational literature to examine and synthesize the current use of Internet in Arab Countries. The obstacles and the factors that affect the use and growth of Internet are language, government policies, culture, cost and technology. They are discussed with their impacts

Analyzing the Role of the State in the Promotion of the Information Revolution

This paper analyzes the relationship between effective state intervention and Information Communications Technology (ICT) dissemination. I theorize that investment in ICT leads to benefits for all firms; without government intervention and incentives, firms will have little reason to invest substantially in this arena. I demonstrate how the collective action problem leads to a lack of private investment as highlighted by the prisoner’s dilemma game. I conduct a multi country regression test to ascertain the factors that influence the dissemination of IT. I then analyze the impact of the United States and South Korean government on ICT by process tracing the role of each government in the dissemination of ICT. My results support my hypothesis. The policy implications for this study are the increase in the level of US government involvement in ICT through encouraging private sector participation, creating new laws, and increasing access to technology in public education

Nonparametric approach to evaluation of economic and social development in the EU28 member states by DEA efficiency

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology is used in this study for a comparison of the dynamic efficiency of European countries over the last decade. Moreover, efficiency analysis is used to determine where resources are distributed efficiently and/or were used efficiently/inefficiently under factors of competitiveness extracted from factor analysis. DEA measures numerical grades of the efficiency of economic processes within evaluated countries and, therefore, it becomes a suitable tool for setting an efficient/inefficient position of each country. Most importantly, the DEA technique is applied to all (28) European Union (EU) countries to evaluate their technical and technological efficiency within the selected factors of competitiveness based on country competitiveness index in the 2000-2017 reference period. The main aim of the paper is to measure efficiency changes over the reference period and to analyze the level of productivity in individual countries based on the Malmquist productivity index (MPI). Empirical results confirm significant disparities among European countries and selected periods 2000-2007, 2008-2011, and 2012-2017. Finally, the study offers a comprehensive comparison and discussion of results obtained by MPI that indicate the EU countries in which policy-making authorities should aim to stimulate national development and provide more quality of life to the EU citizens.Web of Science122art. no. 7

Environment and Policy Factors Shaping E-Commerce Diffusion: A Cross-Country Comparison

The growing use of the Internet and e-commerce for conducting business is being driven by global and national forces. Many firms are being driven toward greater adoption of e-commerce by global competitive pressures, which some suggest will lead to a global networked economy. On the other hand, firms are also being driven by national environmental and policy factors, which are both drivers and inhibitors of e-commerce diffusion. A key question is whether the continuing diffusion of e-commerce will lead to a single homogeneous global market or whether national market niches create special business opportunities and barriers that affect innovation outcomes. This paper identifies and discusses major environmental and policy related factors that influence e-commerce diffusion across and within countries. It is based upon case studies in 10 countries representing both developed and developing countries in each of three major world regions. Although e-commerce is still in its infancy, this preliminary analysis indicates that diffusion is an uneven process across countries and industries. Certain countries and industries are driving the process while others lag behind. Digital divides are evident both between and within developed and developing countries. Moreover, local differences in e-commerce are evident between countries, suggesting that the diffusion process is strongly shaped by national environments and policy rather than following a universal trajectory

Methodology for Determining an ICT Workforce Management Strategy Based on Complementarity of Investments and Sources of Relative Inefficiency

Multiple factors mediate the relationship between investments in ICT and their macroeconomic outcomes. The amount and quality of the available workforce has been identified as one of the complementary to investments in ICT factors. Unlike the developed countries, developing and Transition Economies (TE) do not represent a homogenous group that allows for adapting and implementing strategies of the more successful counterparts. As a result, these economies face the task of formulating unique investment and workforce management strategies. In this study, we investigate the relationship between a subset of investments in ICT, namely, investments in Telecoms, and a full-time Telecom staff, and propose a methodology allowing for formulating a complementary to investments in ICT workforce management strategy. Adapting a framework of neoclassical growth accounting as the theoretical foundation of our inquiry, we propose a two- phase approach utilizing multivariate regression and data envelopment analysis. We argue that our methodology allows for formulating complementary to investments in Telecoms, empirically-justifiable and theoretically sound HR strategies. The illustrative example of the proposed methodology in action substantiates the argument