New report from CSIS: Governments and Global Supply Chains

By James A. Lewis, Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), March 10, 2008  

Synposis: Government policies and practices affect economic outcomes.  Is government action (or inaction) an obstacle to global economic participation?  Do governments provide the environment for the services and infrastructure needed to be competitive?  The answers to these questions decide how much a country's citizens and businesses can benefit from globalization.  This means that governments need to think about economic policy in a new way.  The issues created by global economic integration go well beyond traditional trade policy.  If globalization is the engine of growth, how countries connect to that engine determines how well they will perform. 

Improving how companies and consumers connect across borders is a central task for policy.  The best policies are those that offer more opportunities and make it easier to connect, but since this involves an aggregate of many different government activities, this connectivity is not always easy to measure.  The following survey lets governments assess how well they are performing in delivering the services for interconnection.  It provides benchmarks against which they can measure their performance and suggestions for improvement.

Available for download at http://www.csis.org/index.php?option=com_csis_pubs&task=view&id=4377