China-India relations, which have long been fraught, were further complicated by the 2020 military standoff on the Himalayan border. The political disruption had a significant impact on Chinese companies' presence in India. And yet, India's dependence on Chinese imports has increased since. The...

Members of the World Trade Organization are increasingly disregarding its rules, raising concerns about the future of the multilateral trading system. To analyze the sustainability of the rules-based trade regime, we develop a dynamic framework of stochastic asynchronous games where the leading...

International trade appears to be strongly dependent on the political environment and institutional arrangements. In this context, the commented strand of economics is expected to follow the relationships that can be turbulent. The paper reviews the available literature on international trade,...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) serves as a key forum for negotiating global trade rules, yet it faces significant challenges, particularly in the agricultural negotiations. The collapse of the Doha Round has left critical agricultural issues unresolved. Additionally, the WTO's dispute...

This paper studies the under-explored yet critical role of WTO's regular bodies, particularly focusing on the discussions of "trade concerns" within the Goods Council, its subsidiary bodies, as well as the General Council. These discussions are pivotal for the governance of international trade...

The General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade facilitated liberal trade of goods globally by opening up domestic markets and reducing interference of states in trade. The proposition of the GATT to some extent meant curtailing sovereign powers of the state. Countries were cognizant of the fact...

The chapter explores the far-reaching effects of the digital transformation on trade and trade law. It first sketches the state of affairs under the multilateral forum of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and, second, analyzes the more de- liberate regulatory responses to the challenges of...

The international trade regulatory system is a dynamic system that has been evolving throughout its history. Tension and conflict are part of the system. While calls for the abolition of the principal trade regulation authority, the WTO, have failed to understand this nature of the system,...

The world, in addition to existing inequalities, also suffers from a digital-data divide. Some countries and classes of people have obtained outsized benefits from digitization whereas many others have either not received promised benefits or have even suffered due to job/revenue loss, reduction...

This study endeavors to explore the shock-transmission mechanism between Trade Policy Uncertainty (TPU) and the volatility inherent in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Islamic stock markets by employing the novel Quantile Vector Auto Regression (QVAR) with "Extended Joint" and "Frequency"...

US President Donald Trump proposed implementing "reciprocal tariffs", under which the US would raise import tariffs to match those imposed by its trading partners, further undermining the multilateral rules-based system. This policy brief examines the status quo of tariff differentials between...

How do shifts in the global balance of power shape the world economy? We propose a theory of alignment-based “hegemonic globalization,” built on two central premises: countries differ in their preferences over policies (such as the rule of law or regulatory frameworks) and trade between any...

On average, wages of female workers are lower than wages of male workers. In this paper, we explore to what extent a gender bias in trade costs explains this gender wage gap and how different policy reforms could lower it. First, we analyse the relation between various types of trade costs and...

The outlook for the global economy continues to be weighed down by high uncertainty surrounding economic policy in the United States in general and aggressive tariff measures in particular. Although the threat of tariffs actually boosted economic activity at the beginning of the year, as...

Can the flow of goods, services, and ideas build bridges where conflict once prevailed? If so, under whatcircumstances? The World Trade Organization (WTO) stands for a predictable, rules-based system based on the principle of non-discrimination. When the predecessor to the WTO – the General...

In the context of the push by the European Union for regional integration in the Western Balkans, this paper explores the barriers to, and prospects for, deeper intra-Western Balkan economic relationships. First, it addresses the pronounced bilateral economic relationships between Western Balkan...

We use nearly a decade's worth of panel data from European Union Chamber of Commerce in China business confidence surveys to analyse the deteriorating outlooks of EU firms in China from 2017 to 2025. All firms in China currently face challenges including slow profit growth and deflation. These...

The pledge to develop a new foreign economic policy sits at the heart of the European Commission's Political Guidelines published in July 2024. This ambition has become even more pressing in light of US President Donald Trump's 'America First' trade policy, signalling a disruptive shift in...

In 2011, the American Economic Association (AEA) changed its peer review policy for all their journals, shifting from a double-blind process to a single-blind peer-review process. Under this new system, referees became aware of the authors' identities. In this paper, I explore whether this...

The Belt and Road initiative (BRI), introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, is an economic and geopolitical mega-project that has become a centrepiece of China's foreign and economic policy. The original goal was to better connect the Asian economies with Europe. However, over time...