Breaking connectivity barriers: Does China’s Belt and Road Initiative affect global logistics performance?

We investigate whether China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) improves global logistics performance by analyzing its impact on the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index (LPI) and its components. Exploiting variation in the timing of BRI adoption across 105 countries from 2007 to 2023, we implement a staggered difference-in-differences framework. We find that BRI participation leads to improvement in logistics infrastructure, but does not translate into gains in other logistics dimensions, including customs efficiency, tracking capabilities, quality of logistics services or delivery timeliness. The results are robust to extensive robustness checks. Consistent with these results, LPI improvements are associated with substantial increases in container port traffic and liner shipping connectivity, while governance indicators show no significant changes over the same period. Heterogeneity analysis reveals larger benefits for early adopters and middle-income countries. Our findings inform policymakers that large-scale infrastructure investments should be accompanied by institutional and technological reforms to extend infrastructure gains into broader logistics performance.