Accelerating the African continental free trade area through optimization of digital supply chains

AfricAn continentAl free trAde AreA: Policy and negotiation options for trade in Goods UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT AFRICAN CONTINENTAL FREE TRADE AREA: Policy and Negotiation Options for Trade in Goods

Trade liberalization, supply chains and productivity

This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalization on productivity in Vietnam. The gradual opening up of markets to trade over the course of the last decade culminating with the WTO accession in 2007 makes Vietnam an ideal case for exploring this issue. We use microdata on the population of manufacturing enterprises for the period 2001 to 2010 and match these to data on exports and impo...

Designing Supply Chains Using Optimization

This chapter studies the strategic decision making problem regarding the design of a distribution network and the definition of material flows. In particular, we consider the Two-Echelon Uncapacitated Facility Location Problem (TUFLP). In a general case, the problem is defined as follows. A firm may have relatively few products and a number of plants. Products are shipped from plants to markets...

Modeling The Cost of International Trade in Global Supply Chains

International Supply Chains and the Volatility of Trade

The world trade collapsed in the most recent recession. Some analysts have suggested the increasing offshoring of the supply chain, or vertical specialization (VS) trade, can explain the apparent increase in volatility of trade over the business cycle. This paper develops a model of VS trade to examine its impact on the volatility of trade. The model features increased trade volatility as VS tr...