The paper analyses sectoral patterns of intra-Asian trade for selected Asian countries as well as for sub-regions within Asia. Beyond a general trend towards manufactures, it reveals remarkable differences in specialisation profiles between lagging South Asian countries still concentrating on...

The paper discusses the relevance of past concerns about trade and foreign direct investment diversion to the detriment of Asian suppliers and hosts as a result of EU integration deepening and widening in the nineties. Based on recent empirical evidence, these concerns are rejected. As concerns...

The paper discusses similarities and differences between past EU binding internal liberalization "across the board" in the industrial sector and present so-called voluntary sectoral liberalization of member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). While both approaches are...

The analysis of Baltic regional trade patterns reveals that during the nineties the Baltic states made significant progress to integrate into the Western European division of labour although a significant share of (transit) trade with Russia remained. In view of this development, history seems...

The extensive margin of bilateral trade exhibits a high level of persistence that cannot be explained by geography or trade policy. We combine a heterogeneous firms model of international trade with bounded productivity with features from the firm dynamics literature to derive expressions for an...

We illustrate a new source of comparative advantage that is generated by countries’ different ability to adjust to technological change. Our model introduces substitution of workers in codifiable (routine) tasks with more efficient machines, a process extensively documented in the labor...

Do economic sanctions affect internal support of sanctioned countries’ governments? To answer this question, we focus on the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 and identify their effect on voting behavior in both presidential and parliamentary elections. On the economic side, the sanctions...

Using detailed global trade and novel Multi-Region Input-Output (MRIO) data, this paper examines the East African Community’s (EAC) global and regional integration through trade, global, and regional value chains (GVCs and RVCs). With surgical attention to detail, the first part of the paper...

As consumers’ demand for organic products and especially organic food grows, organic certification for tropical fruit is increasingly promoted in many developing countries. Certified organic pineapple exports only started taking off after 2005 and are rapidly increasing. The organic and...

In January 2015, The Swiss Franc (CHF) appreciated unexpectedly against the Euro by approximately 15%. We document a new fact: French firms that exported to both the Swiss market and the Eurozone also exhibited a sudden change in their export prices to the Eurozone. We coin this the “exchange...