Sustainability and supply chain infrastructure development

This study aims to examine logistics infrastructure, trade differences, and environmental and social equity factors, for a set of 89 countries.

Following recent work which uses secondary data sources for supply chain research at the country‐level, data were obtained from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund databases. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to compute country‐level efficiencies and ANOVA was used to do regional comparisons.

The analysis shed light on country‐level dimensions of logistics infrastructure and trade performance. It also provided insights regarding environmental (e.g. CO2 emissions) and social equity (e.g. health expenditure) dimensions for different regions.

Panel data rather than longitudinal data were used to draw the conclusions. A more exhaustive study could consider a multi‐year timeframe. A limited number of dimensions were examined. As the study was exploratory, further work could consider a more extensive number of dimensions.

The study has important implications for policy makers, since the attractiveness of various resource endowments like those considered here (environmental, social, supply chain logistics) can be seen to be associated with trade performance.

This is one of the few studies to explore efficiency differences (enacted through DEA and ANOVA analyses), differentiating the research from the usual country clustering approaches. It also contributes to the understanding of differences between countries from a macro perspective, which provides insights for firms intending to expand their supply chains.