International Trade and Finance

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is substantially impacting people’s lives and livelihoods and putting extreme stress on socioeconomic systems. International collaboration, coordination and solidarity among all is going to be key to overcoming this unprecedented global challenge. As part of efforts aimed at reducing the international spread of the virus and to mitigate the potentially crippling longer-term consequences of the pandemic, especially for the most vulnerable countries, policymakers need to take a number of measures to ensure the facilitation of international trade and the transport of goods. It is crucial to keep ships moving, ports open and cross-border and transit trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. There is a need to keep ships moving, ports open and crossborder trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. Facilitating trade and the transport of goods has become more important than ever, to avoid logistics obstacles that lead to shortages of necessary supplies. The concrete measures proposed in this policy brief help to facilitate transport and trade and to protect the population from COVID-19.

La pandemia del coronavirus (COVID-19) está afectando sustancialmente las vidas y los medios de subsistencia de las personas y provocando un estrés extremo en los sistemas socioeconómicos. Colaboración internacional, coordinación y la solidaridad entre todos, va a ser clave para superar este desafío global sin precedentes. Como parte de los esfuerzos que buscan reducir la propagación internacional del virus y para mitigar las consecuencias potencialmente devastadoras a largo plazo de la pandemia, especialmente para los países más vulnerables, los responsables de la formulación de políticas deben tomar una serie de medidas para garantizar la facilitación del comercio internacional y el transporte de mercancías. Es crucial mantener los barcos en movimiento, puertos abiertos, comercio y transporte transfronterizo fluyendo, al tiempo que se garantiza que las agencias fronterizas puedan llevar a cabo todos los controles necesarios con seguridad.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is substantially impacting people’s lives and livelihoods and putting extreme stress on socioeconomic systems. International collaboration, coordination and solidarity among all is going to be key to overcoming this unprecedented global challenge. As part of efforts aimed at reducing the international spread of the virus and to mitigate the potentially crippling longer-term consequences of the pandemic, especially for the most vulnerable countries, policymakers need to take a number of measures to ensure the facilitation of international trade and the transport of goods. It is crucial to keep ships moving, ports open and cross-border and transit trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. There is a need to keep ships moving, ports open and crossborder trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. Facilitating trade and the transport of goods has become more important than ever, to avoid logistics obstacles that lead to shortages of necessary supplies. The concrete measures proposed in this policy brief help to facilitate transport and trade and to protect the population from COVID-19.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is substantially impacting people’s lives and livelihoods and putting extreme stress on socioeconomic systems. International collaboration, coordination and solidarity among all is going to be key to overcoming this unprecedented global challenge. As part of efforts aimed at reducing the international spread of the virus and to mitigate the potentially crippling longer-term consequences of the pandemic, especially for the most vulnerable countries, policymakers need to take a number of measures to ensure the facilitation of international trade and the transport of goods. It is crucial to keep ships moving, ports open and cross-border and transit trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. There is a need to keep ships moving, ports open and crossborder trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. Facilitating trade and the transport of goods has become more important than ever, to avoid logistics obstacles that lead to shortages of necessary supplies. The concrete measures proposed in this policy brief help to facilitate transport and trade and to protect the population from COVID-19.

The United Kingdom left the European Union in January 2020. During a transition period that lasts until the end of 2020, the European Union and the United Kingdom aim to determine their future trade relations. In this Research Paper, we explore quantitatively the role of non-tariff measures (NTMs), including regulatory measures such as sanitary and technical requirements, in shaping the United Kingdom's future trade relations with the European Union and the impact on developing countries. We simulate the possible impacts of Brexit using a panel data gravity model and compare the European Union membership effect with the effects of free trade agreements and customs unions. The Paper finds that there is a significant European Union membership effect well beyond zero tariffs, an effect we do not find for the other two agreements. It interprets the effect above and beyond tariffs as the European Union's impact on NTMs. The economic effects for the United Kingdom, the European Union and developing countries are about 2.5 times larger in the scenario that takes rising trade costs related to NTMs in addition to potentially rising tariffs into account. A potential increase of tariffs between the United Kingdom and the European Union and rising trade costs related to NTMs could decrease United Kingdom's exports to the European Union by 14 per cent. Even in the case a "standard" free trade agreement is signed, such exports could drop by 9 per cent. Exports from developing countries into the United Kingdom, and to a much smaller extent into the European Union, could increase if the United Kingdom would not increase its tariffs for third countries.

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.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is substantially impacting people’s lives and livelihoods and putting extreme stress on socioeconomic systems. International collaboration, coordination and solidarity among all is going to be key to overcoming this unprecedented global challenge. As part of efforts aimed at reducing the international spread of the virus and to mitigate the potentially crippling longer-term consequences of the pandemic, especially for the most vulnerable countries, policymakers need to take a number of measures to ensure the facilitation of international trade and the transport of goods. It is crucial to keep ships moving, ports open and cross-border and transit trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. There is a need to keep ships moving, ports open and crossborder trade flowing, while ensuring that border agencies can safely undertake all necessary controls. Facilitating trade and the transport of goods has become more important than ever, to avoid logistics obstacles that lead to shortages of necessary supplies. The concrete measures proposed in this policy brief help to facilitate transport and trade and to protect the population from COVID-19.

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.

This paper makes an empirical contribution to recent debates about the causes and consequences of rising market concentration, in which two polar views have surfaced: the “winner-takes- all” approach and the “market power” approach. The former sees rising market concentration as an inherent part of the innovative and productive drive of market economies, with no substantive change in market power whatsoever, whereas the latter views rising market concentration and market power as two simultaneous phenomena feeding off each other, and adversely affecting innovation and overall economic performance. To contribute to differentiate empirically between these two approaches, this paper proposes a new methodology to measure the magnitude of surplus profits, as in both Classical and Marxian traditions, and the persistence of these over time. It then presents global estimations based on firm-level accounting data for 56 developed and developing countries. The paper finds that the share of surplus profits in total profits has increased from an average of 7% in 1995-2000 to 25 % in 2009-2015, and from 24% to 42 % for the 1% most profitable companies. It also reports increasing market concentration and strong profit persistence among top corporations over time.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has brought to light not only the systemic interdependence of countries, but also the socioeconomic fragility of the global economy. From a trade and development perspective, this has been felt most acutely in the most vulnerable developing countries – the least developed countries (LDCs). Even prior to the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, LDCs faced complex development challenges, compounded with economic growth patterns that have failed to translate into accelerated poverty reduction and job creation. As the international community prepares for the upcoming fifteenth session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XV) and the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (UNLDC V), innovative strategies and approaches to enhance economic growth and address underlying vulnerabilities are urgently needed. This policy brief is a call to action for LDC Governments and the broader international community of development partners to take concerted action in the fostering of productive capacities for sustainable development.