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In 1973 Sweden entered into a free-trade agreement with the EEC. This meant that the EEC principle of prohibition of cartels met with the Swedish principle of abuse. Paper production was heavily cartelised in Sweden and Scandinavian export cartels exercised a strong influence over EEC markets. The problem is analysed in terms of legitimacy – how did the Swedish actors make their claims legitimate? When analysing the arguments used in the negotiations it becomes clear that the Swedish negotiators claimed that paper cartels and no tariffs provided more general utility whereas the EEC argument was that cartels were principally wrong and that the EEC utility was more important than the potential general utility. Since Sweden did not have the upper hand in the discussions the outcome became that the Scandinavian export cartels were formally dismantled and free trade for paper products had to wait for 11 years. When it comes to the actual effects, Swedish paper export could continue in much the same way as before. A process initiated by EC against the Scandinavian newspaper cartels ended up in a compromise founded on a common skepticism towards North American producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the total factor productivity (TFP) of the pulp and paper industry in three Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec) and in three United States (US) states that are contiguously located south of the border (Washington, Illinois, and Maine) over the period of 1971 to 2005. We find that the industry in the three Canadian provinces had much higher TFP growth rates in the era following the Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) signed in 1988. In terms of productivity level, this relative TFP surge allowed the industry in Ontario and British Columbia to move ahead of Illinois and Washington, respectively; however, Quebec trailed further Maine, which is the overall leader in the sample. Our results in this particular case reveal that the Canadian pulp and paper industry did not contribute to the overall Canada-US productivity gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge is an essential ingredient for economic development, growth and gaining a competitive advantage. In order to produce novel and valuable knowledge, it is advantageous, perhaps vital, to rely on insights gained from prior research efforts. Those knowledge spillovers (KS) provide the rationale for sustained economic growth and produce unique place-based knowledge spaces. Due to the spatial embeddedness and stickiness of knowledge, most investigations mainly pay attention to the localized nature of KS, but what about those spillovers from other jurisdictions, or perhaps even from across the globe? To analyse the role played by international KS, the present study investigates to what extent international KS shape the evolution of the UK science and technology space. The first step involves creating knowledge spaces following the methodology outlined by Kogler et al. (2013; 2017) for the period 2006-15. Subsequently, we are following the paper trail of publications and patents developed by UK authors and inventors to depict to what degree international KS in specific science and technology domains have contributed to the production of novel knowledge in the UK. The results indicate that four out of five citations made in publications and patents in the UK are the works of authors and inventors residing elsewhere. This has important policy implications considering recent tendencies to curtail trade and the free movement of labour, all of which contribute to the diffusion of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2020 was the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the turning point for the industries poorly affected by the unexpected conditions. This paper focused on the impact of a range of factors on China's exports of metal manufacture in 2020, in particular the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on it. Using cross-sectional data, the paper collected relevant data for 151 countries in 2020. We applied trade gravity model by considering important parameters impacting on China's exports of metal manufacture such as GDP, distance, population, the total number of cases of COVID-19, employment rate, economic degrees of freedom, the political environment and the free trade agreement between China and other countries. Then, by collecting the data set for 2021, this paper compares the models for 2020 and 2021 with the aim of making a comparison of the impact of the pandemic on China's exports of metal manufactures. We also do some analysis about the trend of the effect of COVID-19 in the future. The paper continues with calculation of China's export potential for metal manufacture for its 151 partner countries including 54 of them are at the Trade Potential Untapped level, 38 at the Trade Potential Growing level and 59 at the Trade Potential Mature level based on gravity model. This paper also offers different detailed trade policies for the distinct levels of trade potential in the light of the impact of the COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering that upstream monopoly will lead to an exponential increase in the loss of social welfare, this paper investigates the impact of intermediate goods tariff concession on the welfare loss of manufacturing enterprises from the perspective of input trade liberalization and effective market power. It has been discovered that input trade liberalization significantly reduces the welfare loss of manufacturing enterprises. Due to the game condition in which oligopolies check each other and small businesses "gain from fishing", the inhibitory impact increases as market share decreases. The mechanism test demonstrates that input trade liberalization boosts the effect of technical competition and minimizes welfare loss through promoting market development degree and reducing factor distortion. In addition, this paper also finds that the effect of input trade liberalization on high monopolistic power enterprises is obviously stronger than that of low monopolistic power enterprises. Furthermore, the impact on non-high-tech industries and capital-intensive enterprises is significant, while that on high-tech industries and labor-intensive industries is not. Therefore, the welfare loss should be investigated from the dual perspective of market structure and marker power. Competitiveness has an important effect, while trade liberalization of intermediate inputs has a pivotal effect on promoting market development and improving resource allocation efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deglobalization and elevated inflation are important features of the current world economy. Will the reversing of globalization affect the level and formation mechanism of inflation in the countries (or regions)? This paper selects 163 sample economies and constructs an index system in measurement of globalization. On such basis, it integrates the index system into the hybrid Phillips curve under the condition of open economy to study the influence of globalization on inflation and the logical mechanism and to further evaluate the driving effect of deglobalization on global inflation. The result shows a deflation effect of globalization, and the effect decreases first and then grow as the globalization level of a country (or region) improves. To further investigate the formation mechanism of inflation, the paper decomposes inflation into inflation trend and inflation cycle. As far as inflation trend is concerned, trade globalization marked by participation in global value chain is the main driver of downward inflation trend in developed economies, while globalization of information and finance is the primary driver of downward trend in emerging and developing economies. As to inflation cycle, trade globalization makes inflation cycle of the countries (or regions) more sensitive to price of international commodities and forms a linkage through trade network. Since the outbreak of the major public health emergency in 2020, the reversing of globalization drove up inflation of the countries (or regions), and those with higher participation in global value chain have higher level of inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the asymmetric effects of exchange rate shocks on inflation for a small open economy, namely South Africa, over the period 1970Q1–2020Q1. Design/methodology/approach: A threshold vector autoregressive model that allows parameters to switch according to whether a threshold variable crosses an estimated threshold is employed to address the objective of this paper. The threshold value is determined endogenously using the Hansen (1996) test. Generalized impulse responses introduced by Koop et al. (1996) are used to study the effects of exchange rate shocks on inflation depending on their size, sign and timing to the inflation cycle. The authors also employed a Cholesky decomposition identification scheme to identify exchange rate shocks in the non-linear model. Findings: The results show that there is a non-linearity effect of the exchange rate shock on inflation. In particular, the effects of 1 or 2 standard deviations of positive (appreciation) or negative (depreciation) exchange rate shock on inflation are small in the long run but a bit larger in the high inflation regime than the low inflation regime. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the literature on the non-linear effects of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to inflation for Sub-Saharan African economies in general and the South African economy in particular by incorporating the size and timing of the exchange rate shocks to the inflation cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]