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Trade uncertainty does influence the firm’s new investment, profitability and supply chain finance. Consequently, it results in decreased consumption and low consumer confidence and eventually disrupts global economic activity. This paper aims to propose a model to uncover the effects of trade policy uncertainty (TPU) on the real economic activity and economy’s health measured in terms of the purchasing manager’s index (PMI).

This study uses the PMI, trade policy uncertainty index, economic policy uncertainty index and short-term interest rate. The relation between economic activity and uncertainty was studied using nested regression and vector autoregressive model.

The empirical results show that PMI of China and Japan were more responsive to the TPU of the USA and remained more fluctuating during the year 2018–2019. Importantly, this paper notices that the US’s PMI reached a low historically subject to its own trade policy and tension with China. Overall, TPU has shown more pronounced effects on PMI across China, Japan and the USA, followed by important economic and political events and major trade tariff uncertainty deals.

The empirical outcome holds some practical implications trade uncertainty affects not only the economic health of the economy but also market participants, global investors and international political environment, recent trade barriers, tariff wars and ambiguity raise question about free and fair global trade and competitiveness of the member country of the world trade organization.

The work is a novel that attempts to explain economic activity and supply chain through PMI. Unlike conventional economic indicators, e.g. gross domestic product, producer price index, consumer price index, employment, etc. PMI measures manufacturing industries’ overall status concerning the number of orders, inventory levels, productions, supplier deliveries and employment.

This chapter identifies features of foreign economic policy of the Republic of Belarus determined by its multidirectional external economic relations and participation in the processes of international economic integration.

It is noted that in the last decade there has been an active search for opportunities to shift the focus in foreign economic policy, including geographic redirection of trade and investment flows, intensification of the search for a “niche” and new ways of incorporating into the world economic relations system, progress toward the liberalization of trade relations by means of multilateral and bilateral interaction formats.

This section assesses the motivation for the boost of the foreign economic policy of the Republic of Belarus in the context of aggravated geopolitical situation and the growth of protectionist tendencies and identifies obstacles to its implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the behavior of governments in terms of trade policy design when they experience a lack of foreign resources from international trade after ensuring the sustainability of their external debt. To do so, the paper defines two concepts of trade space: “De Facto Trade Space” and “De Jure trade space.”

To conduct this study, the author relies on a panel data set comprising 109 countries over the period 1998–2014. To perform the empirical analysis, the author has mainly used the system generalized methods of moments approach.

The empirical analysis suggests evidence that trade space matters significantly for trade policy. Indeed, “De Facto Trade Space” is consistently associated with greater trade policy liberalization, with this positive effect being higher, the higher the development level – proxied by the real per capita income – of the concerned country. “De Jure Trade Space” tends to lead to greater trade policy liberalization in less advanced developing countries, but is associated with the adoption of trade restrictive measures in more advanced countries. Additionally, results suggest different impacts on trade policy of “Positive De Jure Trade Space” and “Negative De Jure Trade Space.”

These findings suggest that the trade space, as defined in this study, plays a key role in trade policy design by policymakers.

The current study shows that trade space could significantly matter for trade policy design by policymakers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the study dealing directly with the “trade space” concept as well as its impact on trade policy.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

The purpose of the study is to develop a macroeconometric model for evaluation of trade policies and forecasting of trade performance of Pakistan with different regions or group of countries.

These regions or group of countries are Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the rest of the world. A macroeconometric model containing 15 behavioral equations and eight identities.

Cointegration results suggest that there exist long-run relationships among variables of all behavioral equations. Additionally, results of different policy shocks based on unit value of export (export price), unit value of import (import price), exchange rate, foreign direct investment, interest rate and foreign exchange reserve suggest that the model is useful for economic planning to sustain growth performance of Pakistan.

In this study, the authors develop for the first time ever a macroeconometric model for the evaluation and forecasting of regional trade policy and performance for Pakistan.

The technological progress has made it possible to transform a physical good into a digital one. This development has influenced international trade and a large volume of these digitisable items are increasingly crossing national boundaries. Goods like books, music and games which were earlier traded physically are now traded online. Digitalisation is reducing the cost of engaging in international trade, connecting businesses and consumers globally, helping to diffuse ideas and technologies and facilitating the coordination of global value chains. The emerging avenues of trade and its format supplemented with fast and ever-changing technology have posed a serious challenge for the policymakers around the world. Policymakers are grappling with several issues regarding digital trade for quite a long time but failed to provide any solution. Institutions like WTO and OECD are also seized with this matter. Yet, we do not have any correct assessment of the potential volume of digital trade. Second, due to the moratorium signed in WTO countries are unable to impose any duty of digital trade. South Asian region which is a net importer of these items loses a huge amount of revenue. Hence, in this study, we make an attempt to assess the potential volume of digital trade in South Asia. The study further tries to estimate the possible loss of tax revenue incurred by this region during the last decade. For both South Asia and India the results for actual import figure are found to be less than the estimated value. A gap of around US$1 billion was found between the actual and estimated import of India, while for South Asia it was the US$ 7 billion.

For estimation, the study largely follows Banga (2019) and extends the methodology further to estimate the tariff revenue loss. Following Banga (2019) the study identifies a list of goods that can be traded in both digitally or physically. In other words, a list of digitisable goods is prepared. Then their import by the South Asian region is measured. Then we examine the tariffs imposed by the individual South Asian countries on the physical trade of these items. The estimation is done by projecting the value of the global physical imports of digitisable products from 2011 to 2017 would have been without digitalisation and what the actual global imports are with digitalisation in this period. The difference between the two gives estimates of total digital imports by the region. The total physical imports of digitisable products in the period 2011–2017 are estimated applying the cumulative growth rate (CAGR) of regional imports of these products over the period 1998–2010. The difference between the estimated physical imports and the actual physical imports provides the estimates of digital imports. Finally, the summation of the tariffs for each of the items gives us the possible figure that the countries are losing by not imposing customs duties.

The study finds globally an estimated value of digitise items to be US$246 billion which is around the US$100 billion higher than the actual value of $147 billion during 2017. For both South Asian region and India estimated import is found to be higher than the actual value. The study estimated an import of $1 billion and $7 billion took place during 2017 in India and South Asia respectively.

Digital trade is undoubtedly one of the highest debated topics in international trade forums. Experts from both academic and corporate discourse are seized with this matter. Policymakers around the globe are poised with this issue to develop a comprehensive policy framework which facilitates the growth of the sector and at the same time safeguard the interest of the stakeholders. South Asian nations like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are also grappling with this. In this background, it becomes utmost important to estimate the loss that they are incurring to take an informed policy decision.

This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalization measured by trade openness (OPN) and tariffs on women empowerment measured by the gender gap index and gender development index, for two groups of Arab countries divided based on their income levels using annual data for the period 1995–2020. The study also considers other factors that may influence the gender gap, such as GDP growth and the female unemployment rate. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues and explorers whether the effects of trade liberalization differ based on the countries' income levels.

This study employs the fully modified ordinary least squares (FM-OLS) regression model for heterogeneous cointegrated panels to examine the impact of trade liberalization on women empowerment. The study constructs an empirical two regression model of women empowerment measured by the gender gap model and gender development model for the two groups of higher-income countries and lower and middle-income countries.

The authors’ findings reveal that the impact of OPN on the gender gap varies between the two groups of Arab countries where more OPN within the higher-income group may increase the gender disparity, while it may reduce disparity within the lower and middle-income countries. In addition, GDP growth may reduce the gender disparity, while female unemployment raises the gender disparity between the two groups of countries in the long run. Findings also reveal that more OPN, tariffs and female unemployment may reduce gender development within the two groups, but more GDP growth may support the gender development in the long run.

This paper not only assesses the impact of trade liberalization on women empowerment generally, but also assess the women empowerment via two indices that are the gender gap and gender development in Arab countries which is – to the knowledge of the researchers – not yet investigated; further it explores if the effects of trade liberalization differs based on the countries' income levels.

This study investigates the effect of multilateral trade liberalization on services export diversification with a view to complementing the recently published work on the effect of multilateral trade liberalization on export product diversification.

The empirical exercise been performed using a panel dataset of 133 countries over the period 1995–2014.

The findings show that multilateral trade liberalization is associated with greater services export diversification in both developed and developing countries alike. This is particularly the case in countries with a high reliance on manufactured goods exports or those that enjoy greater export product diversification. Interestingly, multilateral trade liberalization enhances services export diversification in countries that experience higher foreign direct investment inflows.

These findings highlight the importance of multilateral trade liberalization for services export diversification. The study has considered explicitly supply-side factors that could affect services export diversification. This is because the indicator of multilateral trade liberalization is highly correlated with some demand-side factors, such as the world demand for services exports. Therefore, another avenue for future research could involve looking at the demand side factors that could influence services export diversification, and whether the degree of multilateral trade liberalization matters for the influence of these demand factors on services export diversification.

The current study through its positive effect on both export product diversification and services export diversification, greater cooperation among World Trade Organization (WTO) Members on trade matters could help revive economic growth, particularly in the current COVID-19 pandemic that has significantly plummeted it.

To the best of our knowledge, this is first study that has investigated this issue.