Critical Connections : Promoting Economic Growth and Resilience in Europe and Central Asia : Overview (Anglais)

The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region has a rich history of regional integration and connectivity to the broader world economy, which has stimulated the growth of knowledge and technological innovation. Indeed, through migration, trade, investments...  Voir la suite The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region has a rich history of regional integration and connectivity to the broader world economy, which has stimulated the growth of knowledge and technological innovation. Indeed, through migration, trade, investments, and other interactions, ECA countries have depended on, and benefited from, connectivity with other countries for centuries. A key insight of this report is that ECA’s international connectivity through trade, foreign direct investment, migration, telecommunications, transportation, and other avenues facilitates the transfers of knowledge and technology that are critical to long-term growth and shared prosperity. These connections complement one another because of the tacit (learning by doing), rather than explicit (contained in books or blueprints), nature of knowledge transfers. Migration, for example, enhances knowledge spillovers through trade and foreign investment by migrants transferring information on foreign markets and supporting connections to them. Similarly, the internet and efficient transport links are both necessary for successful e-commerce. This short publication summarizes the main findings of the World Bank flagship study Critical Connections. Critical Connections was born out of the desire to help policy makers focustheir attention on their long-term goals of regional and global integration to capture the benefits of connectivity, from which ECA countries had advanced so far during the early years of market expansion in the 1990s and early 2000s. Its primary purpose is to offer a deep analysis of ECA connectivity and how it has evolved over the past two decades. In a key innovation of the study, a network analysis measure of multidimensional connectivity captures the relationship between different forms of connectivity and their joint impacts on growth and the transmission of shocks.  Réduire