Anything that jeopardises progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals - such as a global pandemic and how governments react to it - is thus a major source of concern, in particular for least developed countries (LDCs). The first half of 2020 witnessed governments imposing dozens of export...

Purpose - This paper aims at exploring the interactions between Japan's export curbs against Korea, dubbed as "weaponized interdependence," and Korea's decoupling from Japan' phenomenon in response. Thereby, it sheds light on the characteristics of the semiconductor industry, where the two...

Gun buyback programs (GBPs), which use public funds to purchase civilians' privately-owned firearms, aim to reduce gun violence. However, little is known about their effects on firearm-related crime or deaths. Using data from the National Incident Based Reporting System, we find no evidence that...

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a discussion among researchers and policy makers about changes to global value chains, both about expected changes and changes that should be promoted by government policies. In this paper we conduct an in-depth analysis of the reasons...

Trade wars are being waged by the United States and Japan. Exports of high-tech inputs (e.g., fluorinated polyimides in semiconductor devices) are now curbed by these countries. Manufacturing high-quality outputs require the use of high-tech inputs. Exports of high-tech inputs may not only...