Since about a decade, we have seen a surge in interest as well as in the use of services preferentialism and unilateral services regulations. This paper provides an economic explanation of services regulation and services preferentialism, including their interaction. The paper derives hypotheses...

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a mechanism through which countries can upgrade connectivity-related infrastructure, including through cross-border projects, complementing traditional sources of finance. An overarching goal of the BRI is to reduce trade costs between China and partner...

This paper attempts to quantify the impact of economic policy uncertainty on overall trade and trade linked to global value chains. Using new data on policy uncertainty for 18 countries and 24 years, it finds a statistically significant negative impact of policy uncertainty on overall trade...

In this paper we compare the patterns of trade and financial integration by exploiting network analysis. Our results show that, by combining binary and weighted network analysis, it is possible to deliver more precise and thorough insights on the topological structure and properties of the...

This paper employs a weighted network analysis to study the empirical properties of the world trade web and their evolution over time. We show that most countries are characterized by weak trade links; yet, there exists a group of countries featuring a large number of strong relationships, thus...

Using firm level data on Italian manufacturing industry, we examine how trade activities are related to workforce composition and wages. We contribute to empirical research on these issues in three ways. First, we provide novel evidence that is consistent with multi-attribute models on firm...

We study trade imbalances between world countries in the period 1960-2000 using a complex-network approach. We show that trade imbalances in absolute value are characterized by a hierarchical arrangement wherein few rich economies display high clustering and carry an important amount of...

In all empirical-network studies, the observed properties of economic networks are informative only if compared with a well-defined null model that can quantitatively predict the behavior of such properties in constrained graphs. However, predictions of the available null-model methods can be...

This paper investigates whether the gravity model (GM) can explain the statistical properties of the International Trade Network (ITN). We fit data on international-trade flows with a GM specification using alternative fitting techniques and we employ GM estimates to build a weighted predicted...

Over the past four decades the High Performing Asian Economies (HPAE) have followed a development strategy based on the exposure of their local markets to the presence of foreign competition and on an outward oriented production. In contrast, Latin American Economies (LATAM) began taking steps...