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What the Corn Laws tell us about Brexit Britain
Wednesday 17th of April 2019
The latest debate over Brexit has caused many to recall another episode in history when the UK’s Conservative party was split over a contentious issue. Back then, in 1846, the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, changed his mind and repealed the Corn Laws that divided his party. Will history repeat itself?
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In South Africa, informal workers helped redesign a market to save it
Thursday 11th of April 2019
Warwick Junction’s maze of stalls, arches and bridges can elicit wonder in any first-time visitor to South Africa’s largest marketplace. The area’s nine distinct markets are wedged between Durban’s major train station, three highway overpasses and dozens of taxi ranks. More than 7,000 informal street vendors sell everything from clothes and fresh produce to medicines and traditional delicacies like bovine head soup. More than 450,000 commuters and shoppers pass through the marketplace every day.
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This map shows how new words spread along trade routes
Wednesday 10th of April 2019
In the early history of international trade, when exotic goods traveled to new regions, their native names sometimes hitchhiked along with them.
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What could a no-deal Brexit mean for developing countries?
Tuesday 9th of April 2019
The Brexit vote of 2016 came as a powerful reminder that progress in economic integration can be reversed. And the raging debates in the UK parliament come as an equally powerful reminder that Brexit never was the easy choice its advocates suggested. To be or not to be is never an easy question, and even less so in an interconnected world.
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Why globalization needs an upgraded operating system
Thursday 4th of April 2019
The G20 Leaders’ Summit in London on April 2, 2009, is widely regarded as one of the best examples of global cooperation in a generation. Meeting as a group for only the second time, leaders of the world’s top economies, accounting for some 85% of global GDP, agreed to provide $5 trillion in fiscal stimulus and $1 trillion in additional resources to the International Monetary Fund, and to implement a wide-ranging program of financial regulatory reform. Coming on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis, the summit was instrumental in restoring confidence in capital markets and bringing the global economy out of its freefall.
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Five ways to increase trust in e-commerce
Friday 22nd of March 2019
Trust between consumers and suppliers is often a bigger issue online than it is offline.
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This is what the trade war overlooks
Friday 22nd of March 2019
In today’s world, digital flows and services are already too big and important to ignore. As governments assess their external balances and competitive positions, hammer out trade deals, and set national policy agendas, they need to look beyond manufacturing and agriculture.
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What you need to know about trade in Brazil – in one map
Thursday 21st of March 2019
Brazil’s economy is very closed, and the government is working to open the country to more trade.
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Why protectionism spells trouble for global economic growth
Wednesday 13th of March 2019
It is sometimes alleged that for all the microeconomic distortions that protectionist policies inflict, there can be a silver lining in terms of macroeconomic gains: more jobs, more output and a stronger trade balance. Indeed, some economies today are seemingly using commercial policy to pursue macroeconomic objectives. Tariffs can dampen imports, boost net exports (the difference between exports and imports, or the trade balance), and so boost GDP, other things being equal.
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Why poverty reduction rests on trade
Friday 1st of March 2019
After a year of escalating trade conflicts, the world must not forget that open trade has been a key engine of economic growth and poverty reduction in recent decades. With the global economy now entering a broad slowdown, measures to expand economic opportunity through trade have become all the more important.
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A Chinese economist explains what we get wrong about the trade war
Wednesday 27th of February 2019
It’s one of the biggest threats to the global economy, and it could finally be near a resolution: the trade war between China and the United States.
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This simple animation shows thousands of years of food globalization in one map
Friday 22nd of February 2019
Since the beginning of archaeology, researchers have combed the globe searching for evidence of the first domesticated crops. Painstakingly extracting charred bits of barley, wheat, millet, and rice from the remains of ancient hearths and campfires, they’ve published studies contending that a particular region or country was among the first to bring some ancient grain into cultivation. The new research brings those studies together to trace the spread of grains around the world.
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Trade is not a weapon. Let’s not use it as one
Monday 18th of February 2019
At the Munich Security Conference last week, I moderated a panel discussion with an intriguing headline: can we make [economic] competitors like the US, Europe and China trade again?
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5 hidden ways that globalization is changing
Thursday 14th of February 2019
Globalization has been a powerful force in shaping modern human history.
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The good news on pensions: sustainable equals profitable
Thursday 7th of February 2019
Would you be interested in investing in companies that produce nuclear weapons? Or companies that damage the environment, pollute our seas or violate human rights? Or companies that have been related to corruption scandals? If your answer is “no”, unfortunately it is likely that you are investing in some way in these types of companies today.
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How trade wars pose a threat to the global economy
Thursday 7th of February 2019
In a year defined by retaliation and counter-retaliation, resulting in a trade impasse between the United States and China, more than half of the two nations’ bilateral trade has been impacted by succeeding escalating rounds of tariffs. Who is winning or losing depends on whom you ask, but regarding trade flows, it’s certainly neither of the leading contenders.
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Make-or-buy decisions of multinational firms depend on the technological importance of the product
Tuesday 5th of February 2019
Global flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) have been steadily increasing in recent decades, resulting in the presence of large multinationals spanning global production networks. Most notable has been the recent growth in Chinese takeovers around the world. For example, China’s HNA Group (of which Hainan Airlines is a part) bought Swiss-based airline caterer Gategroup as well as Swiss aircraft maintenance organisation SR Technics. Overall, the share of non-OECD economies in global outward FDI has increased by a factor of 25 since 2003 (OECD 2015).
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Here are the 20 busiest ports on the planet
Tuesday 5th of February 2019
An estimated 90% of world trade is facilitated by maritime shipping, and as trade volumes continue to increase, the world’s busiest ports continue to grow larger and more efficient to meet demand.
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Can free trade deliver cheaper renewable energy? Ask Mexico
Thursday 24th of January 2019
Clean energy as a concept began as a merely experimental way to produce energy. The prices of this new technology were sky-high, and although more and more countries developed public policies geared towards a faster energy transition, clean energy remained only a concept and not a mainstream technology in the mindset of a vast portion of the world’s population.
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Davos participants call for digital trade deal
Wednesday 23rd of January 2019
“Digitalisation is transforming the global economy, but it is still hard, and in some cases getting harder, to do business abroad. More is required to facilitate trade for all players. Participants at a workshop at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting call for an ambitious and inclusive framework that applies long-standing, high-standard trade principles to digital trade. Participants emphasised the need for this to address e-commerce barriers, enable connectivity, provide inter-operability and standards, apply existing norms to new technologies and facilitate greater global participation in the digital economy. Such efforts are needed for all businesses, particularly small and medium-sized. Participants urge governments to move forward through the joint statement initiative on e-commerce at the WTO, as well as regional and bilateral initiatives.”
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The IMF has cut its forecast for the global economy
Monday 21st of January 2019
While global growth in 2018 remained close to postcrisis highs, the global expansion is weakening and at a rate that is somewhat faster than expected. This update of the World Economic Outlook (WEO) projects global growth at 3.5 percent in 2019 and 3.6 percent in 2020, 0.2 and 0.1 percentage point below last October’s projections.
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China set to post slowest growth in 28 years in 2018
Monday 21st of January 2019
China’s economic growth cooled slightly in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as expected, weighed down by weak investment and faltering consumer confidence as Washington piled on trade pressure, leaving 2018 growth the weakest in 28 years.
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What chocolate and batteries can teach us about Globalization 4.0
Sunday 20th of January 2019
The United States is the world’s largest producer of chocolate, despite barely growing any cocoa trees. Conversely, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) holds over half of the world’s reserves of cobalt, the key raw material for the batteries used to power smartphones and autonomous vehicles. And yet, the DRC barely exports any of these products. Instead, the US, China, South Korea and Japan are the world’s largest manufacturers and exporters of renewable batteries. Why is this the case?
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Four future scenarios for trade and investment. Which one will win?
Friday 18th of January 2019
The global policy outlook for trade and investment has darkened over the past year. Trade conflict is proliferating while structural challenges have deepened. Business sentiment is on the decline. The tariff has returned as a tool for managing trade relations and triggered tit-for-tat retaliation. The World Trade Organization (WTO) could be at risk.
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How a trade war would impact global growth
Friday 18th of January 2019
To estimate the effects of trade tensions on global growth, we created an economic simulation. First, we calculated the direct impact of tariff hikes on GDP. Our simulation assumes that the US will put a 25% tariff on the $505 billion worth of goods imported by China, and that China will retaliate with 50% of the US tariff hike.