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This article aims to examine and present trade relations in global value chains (GVCs) and their impact on Polish trade, emphasizing Poland's ability to react to rapid changes in the global economy, as in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, the author proposed a two-stage study. The first stage focuses on analyzing selected indexes describing the Polish share and position in GVCs against the background of the European Union (EU) and OECD countries. The second stage is related to the analysis of the latest economic trade data and the reaction of Poland, the EU, and OECD to changes in international trade in 2020 and 2021 in the context of GVC. The study uses data from the OECD and WTO Trade in Value Added Database and the Eurostat Database. The relatively quick adaptation of Poland to the world's standards indicates great possibilities for adaptation of the Polish economy. The share of foreign value added in Polish exports was consistent with global trends. The export orientation of Polish production increased during the analyzed period, proving Poland's deep commitment to global production chains. Despite a similar decline in import and export in the first months of 2020, as in the OECD and the EU26, the growth dynamics in the following months were higher in Poland. Many industries in Poland are highly dependent on the smooth operation of GVCs. At the same time, the service sector is gaining importance, and its share in exports is systematically growing. The highly flexible nature of Poland's international trade allowed it to reduce the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its economy.

Subject and purpose of work: This paper studies the process of integration of Poland in the EU Single Market. It makes use of official statistics from a wide range of institutions (IMF, OECD, Eurostat, and Statistics Poland) in order to define structural patterns, shedding light on the overall integration of the country with the rest of the world.

This paper investigates the potential economic effect of 'Indo-Pacific' regional economic cooperation and compares with the extended CPTPP. The Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) results show that the quadrilateral alliance between the United States, Japan, Australia, and India shows although a substantial economic gain whilst South and East Asia join with the Indo-Pacific cooperation, the economic benefit would be enormous. The findings also indicate that South and East Asian improved trade facilitation could bring huge gain as a large part of Indo-Pacific trade has remained unrealized. The trade transaction cost is one of the major trading barriers prohibiting the growth of Indo-Pacific intra-regional trade. The study reinforces that improvement in infrastructure and connectivity that leads to less trade transportation costs should be a necessary step to realise Indo-Pacific trade potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional trade integration is viewed by both international institutions and local political leaders as a key tool for promoting inclusive growth and reducing poverty in Africa. However, several structural weaknesses in African economies undermine trade integration and inhibit its income-enhancing effect. This paper aims to study the conditional effects of intra-African trade openness on the standard of living in Africa by highlighting the influence of these structural weaknesses. Our results clearly show that the impact of intra-regional trade on income depends on the diversification of African economies, their financial development and the quality of their transport and telecommunications infrastructures. Specifically, we find that a substantial improvement in these fundamentals would make intra-African trade significantly income-enhancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inside the EU, the commercial integration of the CEE countries has gained remarkable momentum before the crisis appearance, but it has slightly slowed down afterwards. Consequently, the interest in identifying the factors supporting the commercial integration process is high. Recent findings in the new trade theory suggest that FDI influence the trade intensity but the studies approaching this relationship for the CEE countries present mixed evidence, and investigate the commercial integration of CEE countries with the old EU members. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to assess the CEE countries' intra-integration, focusing on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic. For each country we employ a panel gravitational model for the bilateral trade and FDI, considering its interactions with the other three countries in the sample on the one hand, and with the three EU main commercial partners on the other hand. We investigate different facets of the trade – FDI nexus, resorting to a fixed effects model, a random effects model, as well as to an instrumental variable estimator, over the period 2000–2013. Our results suggest that outward FDI sustains the CEE countries' commercial integration, while inward FDI has no significant effect. In all the cases a complementarity effect between trade and FDI is documented, which is stronger for the CEE countries' historical trade partners. Consequently, these findings show that CEE countries' policymakers are interested in encouraging the outward FDI toward their neighbour countries to increase the commercial integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about how East Asia should respond to the challenges of the external environment. The first challenge is the current slowdown in trade, which has been due to cyclical and structural factors such as the decline in productivity and the maturation of global value chains. The rise in protectionism as measured by rising trade restrictiveness has not impacted on trade, but political and policy uncertainty regarding the direction of trade policy seems to have begun to impact on trade growth. The policy stance of increased protectionism and a retreat from the multilateral rules‐based trading system is linked to the pockets of the population who have not seen their incomes improve and who have blamed their plight and increased inequality on globalization. In fact, the issue is more about the lack of effective responses to manage the costs of trade liberalization. East Asian economies need to respond to these challenges by upholding the multilateral rules‐based trading system, continuing the various pathways to regional economic integration, and ensuring better globalization through effective capacity building and policies to address the negative effects of trade liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effects of trade by observed economies on the intra-regional trade by South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members using Poison pseudo maximum likelihood estimator (PPML) gravity models with panel data over the period 2008–2014. Eight SAARC members and eight observed countries, including the EU, are analysed in capturing the trade effect of observed economies on intra-regional trade in SAARC. This article provides an empirical measure of observers’ trade, FDI and Official development assistance (ODA) with SAARC if the exports and imports of observers to/from SAARC have positive or negative signs for intra-regional exports and imports. The results show that the exports and imports of observers to SAARC members have positive effects on bilateral exports among the members. The FDI of observers reduces the bilateral intra-imports in SAARC and ODA also has a negative effect on bilateral exports among the members. These results imply that the imports by SAARC members from observer countries increase intra-regional trade in the region. The FDI and ODA increase and decrease intra-regional trade in SAARC, respectively, implying that the policies for both FDI inflow from observers and efficient aid management are needed to increase regional welfare. The study also recommends that trade between SAARC members and its observers help to increase intra-regional trade in SAARC. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we analyse the effect that the euro has had on trade using a gravity model for 28 countries and covering the period 1990-2013. Our gravity specification includes time-varying fixed effects, correcting any possible bias that may arise from multilateral resistance variables or unobserved time-varying heterogeneity. Additionally, we explore the potential complementarity or substitution relationship between FDI and trade by including FDI inward and outward stocks in the specification. The time period in the dataset covers the creation and evolution of the European Monetary Union (EMU), starting from the introduction of notes and coins and including the recent economic crisis. Overall, our results show a positive effect of the EMU on trade and reveal the existence of a complementary relationship between trade and FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper comprehensively reviews China's openness since 1978 from three aspects: trade, foreign investment and global production sharing. We point out that the economic development of China is now standing at a historic turning point. Specifically, economic changes in China are discussed from four dimensions: (i) from China being a world assembly line to a world manufacturing powerhouse; (ii) from China being a world capital receiver to a world investor; (iii) from China being a world factory to a world market; and (iv) from the situation of “made in China” to “innovated in China.” At the same time, the global economic system has also reached a turning point. A “North America–Europe–Asia” tri‐polar system has formed, in which the USA, Germany and China, respectively, serve as the regional core economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 90s, after the implementation of various regulatory multinational agreements, debates about the impacts of environmental quality on international trade and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) have been increased considerably. This article tackles this issue for 14 home countries and 39 host countries for 6 Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) over the period 1990–2011 by using gravity models. We also used simultaneous-equation system of gravity models in order to investigate the two-way linkages between trade and FDI in the presence of environmental degradation. Our main findings suggest that the impact of the environmental degradation on trade is negative and significant only for the static estimation. However, the impact of the environmental degradation on FDI is negative and insignificant for both static and dynamic estimations. The results also show that there exists a unidirectional causal relationship running from trade to FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trans Pacific Partnership was set to be the world's largest and most comprehensive FTA linking 12 countries on both sides of the Pacific. In a major turnaround, late January 2017, USA-one of the major trading partners to the region announced its decision to withdraw from it. Four of the ASEAN members under the TPP, namely Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, have a number of existing FTAs with some major TPP members and hold a significant trade share with them. However, these countries do not have any agreements with Canada and Mexico and except Singapore, have no other trade negotiation with the USA, though the USA absorbs a significant share of the exports of the TPP-ASEAN nations, particularly of Vietnam. Given this background, withdrawal of the USA seems to be a major setback for the TPP-ASEAN countries as these economies are expected to be the largest beneficiaries of the agreement. This study investigates how far the non-participation of the USA would affect the overall growth and welfare of each of the TPP-ASEAN countries. For this purpose, the study separately evaluates the impact of the TPP on each of the TPP-ASEAN countries. As an analytical framework, the paper uses a global CGE model and attempts a number of simulations by calibrating various trade integration scenarios, such as tariff reduction and input-augmenting technological change. Results of the study show that all of the TPP-ASEAN members enjoy a welfare gain and positive growth in total output and trade when the USA is a member. Vietnam and Malaysia, in particular are the largest beneficiaries. When the USA is omitted, these countries continue to have positive growth rates but the rates fall considerably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement as originally announced in October 2015 was undoubtedly the largest regional trade accord in history and, if approved, could have set new terms for the nearly US $28 trillion in trade and business investment between the parties to the deal. But the deal hit a roadblock when the USA decided to withdraw from the agreement in January 2017. While some of the countries are interested in taking the TPP forward without the USA, there are others which are still looking at convincing the USA to reconsider its position on the deal. Thus, while all the debate and deliberation around the prospect of TPP continues, an important point to note is that the TPP deal does not include China, world's largest merchandise trader, which had combined exports and imports worth US $3963.5 billion in 2015. Against this backdrop, the present paper seeks to analyze the impact of the TPP agreement on various trade and other economic variables of China both if the USA continues to be a part of TPP and if the USA withdraws from TPP using the Global Trade Analysis Project. The unique contribution of the present study lies in analyzing the trade integration scenarios among the TPP member countries involving all of tariff and non-tariff liberalization and improved market access between the countries, without the USA. The results indicate that China's trade with TPP region, both exports and imports, will suffer post-TPP implementation. Exports which are likely to be hit are leather and leather products, motor vehicles, meat products, processed food, iron and steel. Imports of oilseeds, paper and paper products, nonmetallic minerals and machinery are also expected to suffer. More than the loss in trade, China will experience substantial welfare loss due to all of allocative inefficiency, worsening terms of trade and endowment effect. Of these, worsening terms of trade explain the largest part of welfare loss to the country. With the withdrawal of the USA from the deal, China's trade with the region and its welfare is likely to suffer less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and European Union (EU) on trade are separately estimated using an empirical gravity model. Employing a panel approach with both time-varying country and dyadic fixed effects on a large span of data (across both countries and time), it is found that EMU and EU each significantly boosted exports. EMU expanded European trade by 40% for the original members, while the EU increased trade by almost 70%. Newer members have experienced even higher trade as a result of joining the EU, but more time is necessary to see the effects of their joining EMU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article investigates the impact of wars on trade in the Middle East and North African region. Using an augmented gravity model that controls for the endogeneity problem in our estimation, we introduce a war variable and distinguish between different types of conflicts. The results show that wars have a significantly negative impact on exports, imports and trade. Civil conflicts hinder exports, imports and trade significantly. The disaggregated version of the gravity model shows that non-state conflicts have a detrimental effect on bilateral trade flows in manufacturing, and that none of the conflicts do affect trade in services. We also find that, on average, a conflict is equivalent to a tariff of 5% of the value of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper takes up an argument from Ronald Rogowski about the 'natural affinity' between trade and an electoral system with proportional representation. We draw on literature on the historical determinants of electoral system choice to advance the general argument that trade integration and PR are related because the adoption of PR helps to secure gains from trade. Our specific model of electoral rule changes in the age of globalization predicts that the likelihood of electoral rule change towards more proportionality increases with levels of trade integration in the world economy. The theoretical model draws on a micro model of the distributive effects of increased economic integration. Because more proportional systems are more credibly able to commit to compensate the losers of globalization processes, there will be increased demand to change the electoral system towards more proportionality under economic circumstances that increase the costs of maintaining a closed economy. In accordance with our model, our empirical tests find a positive association between (a) trade integration and the proportionality of the electoral system, (b) proportionality and social spending, and (c) global integration levels and the probability of electoral rules changes that render voting rules more proportional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standards have played an important role in food trade for a very long time. Their rapid growth in recent years has triggered vigorous debates on their impacts on international trade and development, with many arguing that standards are 'non-tariff barriers' to trade and that standards are marginalizing the poor. I present conceptual frameworks and review empirical evidence on the equity and efficiency effects and the political economy of standards. Models which incorporate essential aspects of standards yield complex theoretical results and nuanced conclusions. Careful empirical analyses support such nuanced arguments and find complex effects. For trade, standards can create welfare gains but also involve rent redistribution which induces lobbying by interest groups to set the standards at their preferred level. This makes it difficult to distinguish socially desirable standards from those resulting from political rent-seeking. For development, it is crucial to explicitly account for (a) the endogeneity of the institutional organization of value chains and (b) both smallholder contracting and employment creation on large scale farms when considering the impact of standards on development and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Asian economies have become more connected through physical and institutional infrastructure, the region's trade has grown and changed. Intraregional trade has increased its share, in large part through the expansion of trade in intermediates in connection with development of global value chains. At the same time, as part of the same process and as part of the structural transformation that underlies most economic development, the share of services in Asia's trade has risen. Policies that support the development of regional infrastructure and the flow of goods and services, as well as factors of production, can increase the benefits from connectivity. Meanwhile, regional cooperation has a key role to play in mitigating negative impacts that may arise from the vulnerabilities that accompany greater connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sets forth the two alternate commercial policies between which the European countries must now choose, one aiming at self-sufficiency, the other at intensifying trade between the dollar area and the rest of the world. The first of these solutions would allow a momentary saving of dollars, but would entail the autarkic development of the several national productions, with sacrifices beyond the possibilities of the convalescent European economies. In giving reasons in support of the second alternative, the author defines the responsibilities of the participating countries and more especially of the United States in carrying out this policy and points out that the development of depressed areas in and out of Europe with American help might be decisive in “getting the wheel over the centre”. JEL: F15

The rapid growth in China's domestic investment in recent decades has generated a large appetite for global goods, including from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper estimates the impact of changes in China's investment growth on SSA's exports. Although rising trading links with China have allowed African countries to diversify their export base across countries away from advanced economies, they have also led SSA countries to become more susceptible to spillovers from China. Based on panel data analysis, a one percentage point increase (decline) in China's domestic investment growth is associated with an average 0.6 percentage point increase (decline) in SSA countries' export growth. This impact is larger for resource-rich countries, especially oil exporters. These effects could be mitigated, however, to the extent that countries can reorient their exports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We employ a wavelet spectrum analysis to study globalization and business cycles in China and G7 countries. The co-movement synchronization between G7 countries and China is shown to have undergone frequent and large changes during our sample period. The co-movements for business-cycle frequencies are generally different from those for other frequencies. We find a significant relationship between the time-varying wavelet measure of synchronization and trade only for business-cycle frequencies. The co-movements at longer frequencies are negatively related to trade, so that the overall co-movements and trade tend not to be significantly related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]