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Lexical distance and the diffusion of technology The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Evan Wigton‐Jones
This research shows that linguistic differences can influence the diffusion of technology and income between countries. I use a measure of language similarity known as the normalised Levenshtein distance to show that lexical distances closely track bilateral differences in the adoption intensities of key production technologies. This relationship holds for technologies in the transportation, information
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Estimating the effects of trade agreements: Lessons from 60 years of methods and data The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Mario Larch, Yoto V. Yotov
Starting with Tinbergen (1962, Shaping the world economy: Suggestions for an international economic policy, The Twentieth Century Fund), quantifying the effects of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on international trade flows has always been among the most popular topics in the trade literature. Also not surprisingly, to estimate the effects of RTAs, most researchers and policy analysts have relied
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Economic costs of friendshoring The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Beata Javorcik, Lucas Kitzmüller, Helena Schweiger, Muhammed A. Yıldırım
Geo‐political tensions and disruptions to global value chains have led policymakers to re‐evaluate their approach to globalisation. Many countries are considering friendshoring – trading primarily with countries sharing similar values – as a way of minimising exposure to weaponisation of trade and securing access to critical inputs. If followed through, this process has the potential to reverse global
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Robots in action The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Taraneh Shahin, María Teresa Ballestar de las Heras, Ismael Sanz
This empirical study delves into the intricate factors that shape firms' choices regarding the adoption of robots within the Spanish context. Using a dataset encompassing a diverse set of industries, we employ an empirical analysis to uncover the determinants of robot adoption and investigate the associated outcomes on market variables. Our findings reveal several key factors that significantly influence
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Crisis averted: Cross‐market reallocation during the great trade collapse The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Atle Oglend, Frank Asche, Hans‐Martin Straume
This article investigates cross‐market reallocation of trade to mitigate negative effects of large economic shocks. We propose a simple measure of trade reallocation and apply it to Norwegian exports during the great trade collapse following the financial crisis in 2008–2009. The results indicate statistically significant cross‐market reallocation of trade away from markets hit hard by the crisis as
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FDI, financial constraint and partial ownership The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-03-01 Tadashi Ito, Michael Ryan, Ayumu Tanaka
This study uses matched firm‐bank‐FDI data from 1989 to 2016 to explore how a firm's financial constraints affect its foreign affiliate ownership structure choice. Importantly, it tests the hypothesis that parent firms with banks as their largest shareholders hold lower ownership shares in their foreign subsidiaries, in part due to typical bank risk‐averse behaviour. The empirical analysis confirms
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Steel, security and the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism: A trade catastrophe in the making The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Kenneth A. Reinert
The World Trade Organization's (WTO's) Dispute Settlement Mechanism has been rendered ineffective by the refusal of the United States to allow appointments to its Appellate Body. The implicit reason for this poor state of affairs is the desire of the United States to protect its steel sector under the WTO's national security exception. The arguments made by the United States in this regard are mostly
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Remittances and inequality: A meta‐analytic investigation The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-02-27 Amar Anwar, Colin F. Mang, Sonia Plaza
This article provides a comprehensive meta‐analysis that addresses an important gap in the literature by examining the relationship between remittances and inequality in recipient countries. While numerous empirical studies have explored this relationship, there has been no prior attempt to systematically and rigorously synthesise the evidence. This study employs advanced meta‐analysis techniques,
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Structural transformation and inequality: Does trade openness matter? The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-02-25 Wannaphong Durongkaveroj
The purpose of this paper is to examine income inequality in the process of economic growth and structural transformation with emphasis on the role of economic openness using a new measure of trade openness (the price convergence index [PCI]), which is an alternative measure to the widely used trade‐to‐GDP ratio. The analysis is based on a multi‐country panel data covering 48 countries for the period
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Financial distance and FDI flows: Evidence from OECD economies The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-02-11 Konstantinos Dellis
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has grown dramatically as a major form of international capital transfer over the past decades. The unprecedented growth of cross-country FDI flows has been attributed to a rich set of economic, geographical and institutional factors. In this paper, Ι examine the role of financial system heterogeneity as a potential detrimental factor to FDI flows across OECD economies
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The European Union's Global Gateway: An institutional and economic overview The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Simone Tagliapietra
Infrastructure investments are the material way of turning sustainable development goals into practice. Climate action requires renewable energy plants, power grids and electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, in the same way that health requires hospitals, education requires schools or connectivity requires ports. In this context, the Global Gateway can help meet the European Union (EU)'s international
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The effects of cross-border acquisitions on firms' productivity in the EU The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-12-12 Wildmer Daniel Gregori, Maria Martinez-Cillero, Michela Nardo
This study empirically investigates the extent to which firms in the European Union, once acquired through a cross-border acquisition, show different productivity levels as compared to those firms that have not been acquired. Our identification strategy relies on the combination of Propensity Scores and the Staggered Difference-in-Difference estimator, using firms' balance sheet data for the years
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Estimating the landlocked penalty for international trade The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-12-01 Pratistha Gyawali
This paper studies the effect of being landlocked on international trade flows in the manufacturing sector. The study overcomes the empirical challenge of using a country-specific variable ‘landlocked’, within a structural gravity framework in the presence of importer and exporter fixed effects. Results show that the impact of being landlocked for manufactured goods trade is highly negative and statistically
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Globalisation and carbon dioxide emissions inequality in OECD countries The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-30 Jianchun Fang, Giray Gozgor, Mantu Kumar Mahalik, Gupteswar Patel, Xueyin Song
Economic growth has been crucial in contributing to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the Industrial Revolution, and it affects CO2 emissions heterogeneously with different income levels. Therefore, studying the role of economic growth on inequality in carbon emissions is imperative. This paper analyses the determinants of CO2 emissions inequality in the panel dataset of 37 Organisation for Economic
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How EU membership affects foreign direct investment: Differences between EU15 and CEE countries The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-28 Bettina Meinhart
This article examines the impact of membership in the European Union (EU) on foreign direct investments (FDI). In contrast to previous studies, the overall effect of EU membership is disaggregated by countries that joined the EU before 2004 (EU15) and those that joined after 2004 [Central and Eastern European (CEE)]. This disaggregation is motivated by differences between the two groups in terms of
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Anti-dumping policy in Japan: From passive to active and self-disciplined anti-dumping actions The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Chisato Shibayama
While Japan's anti-dumping (AD) legislation has a long history, the use of AD policies in Japan was limited until the 2010s. This study analyses the evolution of Japan's AD policy over more than 100 years and its background across four periods: (1) from the AD Law's enactment in 1920 to the establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); (2) from the establishment of GATT to 1990
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What's the influence of input's variation? Estimating the input elasticity in the global value chain The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Xian-nan Cheng, Shuhui Wen, Nuobing Fan, Yuwei Liu, Yujing Wang
This article presents a comprehensive framework for assessing the influence of input variation during the period of stagnant expansion of the global value chain (GVC) by incorporating input elasticity. Each import sector is treated as a complete input demand system with a stochastic preference for input in the framework of Ghosh Inverse, and the input elasticity is employed to quantify the input variation
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EU agriculture under an import stop for food and feed The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Ferike Thom, Alexander Gocht, Harald Grethe
Recent disruptions in international trade have had significant impacts on consumers and producers worldwide and stemmed from various reasons. This study aims to identify key vulnerabilities in EU agriculture by examining an import stop on food and feed products. By conducting this stylised simulation using a global PE model (CAPRI), the authors analyse the adjustment mechanisms within the sector, investigate
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African economic integration and trade The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-27 Marie M. Stack, Emmanuel B. Amissah, Martin Bliss
Economic integration ranks as one of the leading development strategies in Africa. The newly created African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the proposed Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) linking three major regional blocks offer a new impetus to studying trade policy effects. Using a structural gravity model of bilateral manufacturing trade between the African Union member states and all
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The impact of automation on labour market outcomes in emerging countries The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-23 Luis R. Díaz Pavez, Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso
The labour market effects of automation have gained significant attention from scholars and policymakers. Concerns about negative effects are important in emerging countries, where a rapid acceleration of robot adoption and an increasing involvement in global value chains have been observed in recent years, with the subsequent increase in exposure to foreign competition. This paper estimates the effect
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Labour-saving automation: A direct measure of occupational exposure The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-24 Fabio Montobbio, Jacopo Staccioli, Maria Enrica Virgillito, Marco Vivarelli
This article represents one of the first attempts at building a direct measure of occupational exposure to robotic labour-saving technologies. After identifying robotic and labour-saving robotic patents, the underlying 4-digit CPC (Cooperative Patent Classification) code definitions, together with O*NET (Occupational Information Network) task descriptions, are employed to detect functions and operations
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The impact of automation on labour market outcomes in emerging countries The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-23 Luis R. Díaz Pavez, Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso
The labour market effects of automation have gained significant attention from scholars and policymakers. Concerns about negative effects are important in emerging countries, where a rapid acceleration of robot adoption and an increasing involvement in global value chains have been observed in recent years, with the subsequent increase in exposure to foreign competition. This paper estimates the effect
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Uncertainty of supply chains: Risk and ambiguity The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-20 d'Artis Kancs
Motivated by the recently experienced systemic shocks (the COVID-19 pandemic and the full-fledged Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine)—that have created new forms of uncertainties to our supplies—this paper explores the supply chain robustness under risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. We aim to understand the potential consequences of deeply uncertain systemic events on the supply chain resilience
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Towards meaningful transparency at the WTO: Reinforcing the trade policy review mechanism1 The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-14 André Brotto Reigado, Simon J. Evenett, Fernando Martin
We characterise the operation of the World Trade Organization's Trade Policy Review as an exercise, albeit valuable, in performative transparency. We describe steps taken by the St. Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade to augment this review process so as contribute towards meaningful transparency. Drawing from recent Trade Policy Reviews of G20 countries, specific examples are described where
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Towards meaningful transparency at the WTO: Reinforcing the trade policy review mechanism1 The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-14 André Brotto Reigado, Simon J. Evenett, Fernando Martin
We characterise the operation of the World Trade Organization's Trade Policy Review as an exercise, albeit valuable, in performative transparency. We describe steps taken by the St. Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade to augment this review process so as contribute towards meaningful transparency. Drawing from recent Trade Policy Reviews of G20 countries, specific examples are described where
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Fiscal and current account imbalances: The cases of Germany and Portugal The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-10 António Afonso, José Carlos Coelho
We investigate the bilateral relationship between government budget balances and current account balances for Germany and Portugal. We find that the response of the current account balance to the budget balance is greater in Portugal than in Germany. On the other hand, the response of the budget balance to the current balance is higher in Germany than in Portugal. In Germany and Portugal, a fiscal
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Fiscal and current account imbalances: The cases of Germany and Portugal The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-10 António Afonso, José Carlos Coelho
We investigate the bilateral relationship between government budget balances and current account balances for Germany and Portugal. We find that the response of the current account balance to the budget balance is greater in Portugal than in Germany. On the other hand, the response of the budget balance to the current balance is higher in Germany than in Portugal. In Germany and Portugal, a fiscal
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How bilateral foreign direct investment influences environmental convergence The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Vignawou Lucien Ahouangbe, Camelia Turcu
This paper analyzes environmental convergence and its determinants. We construct our analysis in a bilateral setting and hypothesize that, through foreign direct investment (FDI), one or more investor countries could impact the environmental performance of their hosts, leading thus to a possible environmental convergence between home and host economies. To do this, we construct an original database
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Services' trade in Africa: Structure and growth The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Andrea Ariu, Laura Ogliari
This paper shows that trade in services is still at its infancy in Africa. Its growth started later than for other developed and developing economies and, so far, it involves mostly low-skilled services. Disentangling the different sources of trade growth, we find that demand and supply determinants have been relatively stable during the period 2002–2016, while service diversification and trade policy
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Uncertainty and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in the United States and Brazil: SVAR approach The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Eduardo de Sá Fortes Leitão Rodrigues
The article analyses the interference of uncertainty on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. This issue is investigated through the lens of a Structural Vector Auto Regressive (SVAR) model for the United States and Brazil. Imposing government spending shocks, the models highlight a positive effect on economic activity. The results suggest Keynesian effects on consumption and GDP. To assess the effects
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Uncertainty and the effectiveness of fiscal policy in the United States and Brazil: SVAR approach The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Eduardo de Sá Fortes Leitão Rodrigues
The article analyses the interference of uncertainty on the effectiveness of fiscal policy. This issue is investigated through the lens of a Structural Vector Auto Regressive (SVAR) model for the United States and Brazil. Imposing government spending shocks, the models highlight a positive effect on economic activity. The results suggest Keynesian effects on consumption and GDP. To assess the effects
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An analysis of value chain trade in Africa The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Angella Faith Montfaucon, Natnael Simachew Nigatu, Socrates Kraido Majune
Africa's participation in global value chains (GVCs) is not well documented compared with the developed world. Clearly understanding GVC participation levels is critical to enable evidence-based policy. This paper uses two sources of data to assess Africa's GVC participation and empirically estimates determinants of GVC participation across the data sets. The analysis relies on databases based on customs-level
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Does Belt and Road Initiative attract Cross-Border M&As from other countries? The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Chaoqun Zhan, Hanxi Wang, Chenxue Hou
This article examines how the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affects Cross-Border M&As (CMAs) inflows to countries along the Belt and Road routes (BRI countries) from non-BRI countries. We conduct a difference-in-differences estimation with a control group constructed through propensity score matching. We find that the BRI significantly reduces CMAs from non-BRI countries to BRI countries. The results
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The impact of interstate soft conflicts on bilateral trade flows using structural gravity model The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Tamar Taralashvili
This paper contributes to the literature on the economic impact of interstate conflicts by focusing on empirical analysis of the impact of interstate soft conflicts on bilateral trade. Interstate soft conflicts arising from the failure of diplomacy when a military operation seems too radical may act as a policy tool and have a negative impact on bilateral relations. The empirical approach is based
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Forecasting stability and growth pact compliance using machine learning The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-26 Kéa Baret, Amélie Barbier-Gauchard, Théophilos Papadimitriou
The 2011 reform of the Stability and Growth Pact (1996) strengthened the European Commission's monitoring of EU member states' public finance. Failure to comply with the 3% limit on public deficit triggers an audit. In this paper, we present a machine learning based forecasting model for compliance with the 3% limit. We use data from 2006 to 2018 (a turbulent period including the Global Financial Crisis
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Pandemics and economic turmoil in the short-run: The role of fiscal space The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-25 João Tovar Jalles
We estimate, by means of the local projection method, the short to medium-term economic impact of previous pandemics in a sample of 170 countries during the 2000–2018 period. We find that the output effect has been significant (reaching over −2 percent after 5 years) and persistent. The impact has varied across income groups, with pandemics affecting more developed countries through a big negative
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Pandemics and economic turmoil in the short-run: The role of fiscal space The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-25 João Tovar Jalles
We estimate, by means of the local projection method, the short to medium-term economic impact of previous pandemics in a sample of 170 countries during the 2000–2018 period. We find that the output effect has been significant (reaching over −2 percent after 5 years) and persistent. The impact has varied across income groups, with pandemics affecting more developed countries through a big negative
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A positive effect of uncertainty shocks on the economy: Is the chase over? The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Nicolas Himounet, Francisco Serranito, Julien Vauday
How large and persistent are the effects of uncertainty shocks on the economy? Are the effects of macroeconomic uncertainty shocks different from those of financial uncertainty shocks? In the empirical literature, there was a consensus on an estimated negative impact of uncertainty on macroeconomic variables. Recently, some studies identifying shocks with a novel methodology, namely the events constraint
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Regulatory convergence within technical barriers to trade The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-18 Mahdi Ghodsi
This paper analyses how regulatory convergence in different categories of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) imposed on imports of goods in information and communications technology (ICT) globally affected the values, volumes and unit values of imported goods during the period 1996–2019. Keywords cited in TBTs that are notified to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) give an indication of the regulatory
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Introduction to INFER special issue on “new aspects of economic and financial integration” The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-18 António Afonso, Cristina Badarau, Camélia Turcu
This Special Issue (SI) gathers 13 papers presented at the 23rd INFER Annual Conference which took place in Lisbon, 8–10 September 2021, at ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management. The conference was organised by INFER (International Network for Economic Research), UECE (Research Unit on Complexity and Economics), and REM (Research in Economics and Mathematics). The papers of the SI focus
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The socioeconomic impact of Special Economic Zones: Evidence from Cambodia The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Mariya Brussevich
This study examines the socioeconomic impact of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Cambodia—a prominent place-based policy established in 2005. The paper employs a database on existing and future SEZs in Cambodia with matched household surveys at the district level and documents stylized facts on SEZs in a low-income country setting. To identify the causal effects of the SEZ program, the paper (i) constructs
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Geopolitical risks and financial stress in emerging economies The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Tam NguyenHuu, Deniz Karaman Örsal
We investigate the impacts of geopolitical risks (GPRs) on financial stress (FS) in major emerging economies from 1985 to 2019. Applying a recently developed panel quantile estimation method, we show that GPRs pose serious risks to the stability of the financial condition in emerging economies. Namely, when FS is already equal to or above average, GPRs intensify this instability to a remarkable degree
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The socioeconomic impact of Special Economic Zones: Evidence from Cambodia The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Mariya Brussevich
This study examines the socioeconomic impact of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Cambodia—a prominent place-based policy established in 2005. The paper employs a database on existing and future SEZs in Cambodia with matched household surveys at the district level and documents stylized facts on SEZs in a low-income country setting. To identify the causal effects of the SEZ program, the paper (i) constructs
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Geopolitical risks and financial stress in emerging economies The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Tam NguyenHuu, Deniz Karaman Örsal
We investigate the impacts of geopolitical risks (GPRs) on financial stress (FS) in major emerging economies from 1985 to 2019. Applying a recently developed panel quantile estimation method, we show that GPRs pose serious risks to the stability of the financial condition in emerging economies. Namely, when FS is already equal to or above average, GPRs intensify this instability to a remarkable degree
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Deep trade agreements, production position distance and bilateral global value chain participation The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Zhaobin Fan, Sajid Anwar, Ying Zhou
Owing to globalisation-induced fragmentation of production across regions and reorganisation of global value chains (GVCs), more attention is being paid to the impact of deep preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on GVC participation. We examine how the promotional effect of deep trade agreements on GVC participation changes with GVC production position distance between member countries. We argue that
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Product mix adjustments and import competition in Vietnam's manufacturing industries The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-09 Tien Dzung Nguyen, The Kien Nguyen, Xuan Nam Vu
In this article, we make use of Vietnam's annual enterprise surveys to investigate the product selection and product mix responses to import competition in manufacturing firms. We estimate the effect of imports from Vietnam's free trade agreement partners on firms' product scope and sales concentration, controlling for firms and industry characteristics and the conditions in export markets. The empirical
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The impact of foreign demand shocks on organisational hierarchies The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-08 Santiago Bonilla, Sašo Polanec
According to the theory of knowledge-based hierarchies, a sufficiently large change in firm size should induce firms to change their organisational structure by adding or dropping organisational layers. In open economies, one of the main determinants of firm size is the volume of foreign sales, and its changes may also trigger reorganisations. However, changes in foreign sales are not only driven by
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Oman's trade achievements with Singapore given the Gulf–Singapore Free Trade Agreement The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Azmat Gani
Oman's trade performance achievements with Singapore are assessed within the Gulf–Singapore Free Trade Agreement (GSFTA) framework. Since coming into force in January 2015, Oman's total export value to Singapore has plunged significantly. The number of imported products from Singapore remained significantly higher than the number of Oman's exports to Singapore, confirming that Omani exports have a
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African firms in global value chains: What can we learn from firm-level data in Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire? The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-10-03 Romaric Coulibaly, Heddie Moreno, Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann, Nouhoum Traore
The paper offers a detailed review of African firms' participation to international value chains and provides new quantitative insights on two countries, Cameroon and Ivory Coast, based on a unique dataset, which was obtained by merging firm census and detailed customs transactions over time. “GVC firms” are defined as firms that both export and import, with positive production and labour. The paper
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The landscape of CO2 emissions across Africa: A comparative perspective The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Jaime de Melo, Jean-Marc Solleder
This paper provides evidence on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for 51 African and 132 other countries in 163 sectors over the period 1995–2015. The resulting landscape is summarised in four patterns. Patterns identified for Africa differ from those identified for other regions but are closely related to a synthetic aggregate comparator based on key country characteristics. (1) All regions have reduced
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The economic impact of broadband access for small firms The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Pantelis Koutroumpis, Danai Sarri
This paper investigates the economic effects of improved broadband access at the firm level. Using a detailed micro data set from 2002 to 2017, we cover almost 20,000 small, medium and large Greek firms and test the relationship between their economic performance with the availability and use of broadband services at the postcode level. We trace the effect of increased access and speeds across industrial
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Service offshoring and its impacts on wages: An occupation-oriented analysis of Germany The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-24 Michael Frenkel, Ngoc Tuyet Ngo
International trade in services has increased significantly in recent decades, mainly due to innovations in information and communication technology. This development has also increased the importance of service offshoring, as companies spread their production processes across several countries. This paper examines the intensity of offshoring of specific tasks of occupations, which in turn leads to
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Does the depth of trade agreements matter for trade in services? The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-23 Amelie Guillin, Isabelle Rabaud, Chahir Zaki
In recent years, deep trade agreements have spread around the world and gone beyond tariff reductions. We aim to test whether the depth of agreements fosters trade in services. To do so, we use a structural gravity-type model and build new indicators of the depth of agreements based on the number of articles that are legally enforceable and that are related to trade in services. We show that, while
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The impact of internet platform usage on firms' exports: New evidence for Turkish firms The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-22 Emine Elçin Köten
In the last decade, the key driver of e-commerce growth has been the expansion of internet access. Studies indicate that the internet is transforming both the production and consumption of goods and services in the domestic and international markets. Internet platform usage has significantly decreased the barriers for firms to communicate with foreign clients and suppliers on their international market
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Are software automation and teleworker substitutes? Preliminary evidence from Japan The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Richard Baldwin, Toshihiro Okubo
Digital technology is reshaping workplaces by enabling spatial separation of offices, known as telework, or remote intelligence (RI) and by facilitating automation of service sector tasks via artificial intelligence (AI). This paper is the first attempt to empirically investigate whether AI and RI are complements or substitutes in the service sector. It uses a worker-level panel of surveys collected
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Regional integration and services in African value chains: Retrospect and prospect The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Ben Shepherd
This article takes a first step towards understanding the quantitative evidence on the role of services in African value chains. The available data are largely based on assumptions and modelled estimates, but can nonetheless provide some useful information at an aggregate level. In general, services play an important role in the African regional economy, including through their embodiment in the exports
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Trade and value chain participation: Domestic firms and FDI spillovers in Africa The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Bernard Hoekman, Marco Sanfilippo
Data on the location of foreign direct investment (FDI) projects within and across African nations are combined with firm-level survey data and information on sectoral input–output relationships to assess what types of FDI are more likely to influence participation in global value chains (GVCs) and to investigate the relationship between FDI and the performance of proximate domestic firms. Firm-level
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Integration of African countries in regional and global value chains: Static and dynamic patterns The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Emmanuel B. Mensah, Johannes Van Biesebroeck
We study the geographic concentration of trade flows of African countries using information on the global input–output structure of trade from the Eora database. Most countries show a similar concentration between close-by versus long-distance trade in their foreign input sourcing as in their export sales. However, changes over the last two decades indicate that many countries increasingly focus their
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The least developed countries' Services Waiver, Aid for Trade for services and services exports The World Economy (IF 2.0) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Sèna Kimm Gnangnon
In 2011, Trade Ministers of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) adopted a Decision that allows WTO Members to accord preferential treatment to services and service suppliers originating in least-developed countries (LDCs). In 2013, another Ministerial Decision was adopted to operationalise the 2011 Waiver Decision. This paper has examined whether the Waiver Decision had been effective in promoting LDCs'