United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Research Papers

The key question this paper addresses is how national governments of a regional grouping can act collectively to finance regional digital infrastructures. The paper suggests that sub-regional development banks could provide long-term finance and play a coordination role where needed. However, their financing capacity is limited, when contrasted with the scale of needs. A way forward is to inject more capital into these banks and create funds for regional digital infrastructure.

The expansion of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) has introduced tools to address key sustainability challenges and expand trade as well as new complexity in trade policy dialogues. Although VSS are voluntary, they have become a market reality and non-compliance can lead to the exclusion of producers from Global Value Chains (GVCs). Although the literature has adequately addressed the theoretical trade impact of VSS, there is a worrying lack of empirical analysis in this field. This paper aims to draw the attention of researchers towards the lack of evidence in this area. Given that the gap in the literature can partly be explained by data access, we also present some of the publicly available data sources and highlights the significance of increasing transparency in terms of data availability.

Social distancing measures have been introduced in many countries in response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. The rate of compliance to these measures has varied substantially. This research paper studies how cultural differences can explain this variance using data on mobility in Swiss cantons between January and May 2020. We find that mobility declined after the outbreak but significantly less in the German-speaking region. Contrary to the evidence in the literature, we find that within the Swiss context, higher generalized trust in others is strongly associated with lower reductions in individual mobility. We attribute these results to the German-speaking cantons having a combination of not only high interpersonal trust but also conservative political attitudes which may have altered the trade-off between the chance of contracting the virus and the costs associated with significant alterations of daily activities.

This paper constructs and analyses a set of novel indicators on gender equality in the business sector, which focus on multinational enterprises and foreign traders. The descriptive data tables are drawn from the rich linked statistical registers available at Statistics Finland. The analysis reveals large differences in the share of women and men employed in the best paying professions. However, while a sizeable gender pay gap in the business sector is identified in high-paying managerial and skill-intensive occupations, and in multinational enterprises in particular, the gap is smaller in domestically owned businesses. The gender pay gap tends to be larger in high-paying jobs in foreign multinationals and in enterprises that trade internationally. This paper contributes to the field of official statistics by providing a blueprint, showing how business statistics and social statistics can be linked to enable an analysis of gender inequalities in the labour market.

Digital platforms provide a variety of services such as marketplaces, social networking, search engines and payment systems. Their business model relies on data and data monetization for growth. These are multi-sided, oligopolistic or monopolistic markets characterized by network effects, high economies of scale and scope, and increasing returns to scale, which together raise barriers for new entry. In digital markets, platforms compete for the market and not in the market. These features together with control over user data confer significant market power to incumbent platforms in their respective markets. This has raised concerns about competition and led the competition lawyers and economists reflect on ways to restore the lost competition in digital markets. This paper suggests adapting competition law tools and analysis to the realities of this new business model; reforming merger control regimes; focusing not only on free but also fair competition in digital markets; adopting regulatory measures such data openness and portability, interoperability between online platforms. The paper also questions the relevance of consumer welfare standard based on price effects and efficiency to the new business model of online platforms. It suggests adopting a broader framework including choice, quality, privacy, innovation, future competition and effective competition structure and competitive process in competition law enforcement.

This research paper presents a preliminary assessment of the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on commodities exports to China with a focus on exports from Commodity Dependent Developing Countries (CDDCs). Results indicate that in comparison to short term tendencies observed in the past three years, total commodities exports to China are currently moving downward. As compared to a situation without the COVID-19 crisis, total commodities exports to China may fall by 15.5 to 33.1 billion US Dollars during 2020, resulting in reduction of the projected annual growth of up to 46 percent (i.e. 8 percentage points). Although CDDCs commodities exports to China are also expected to decrease, the estimated impact is weaker.