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The hypotheses that an increase in relative price elasticities is not associated with increased import substitution and that an increase in income and foreign exchange elasticities is not associated with a greater degree of “openness” of the Cameroon economy are investigated using cointegration and error‐correction modelling. Disaggregation of total imports into raw materials, consumer, intermediate and capital goods shows that long‐run relative price elasticities of import demand are greater than short‐run values, being above unity for raw materials and consumer goods; thus leading to rejection of the first hypothesis for these categories of imports. Imports are income‐elastic for capital and intermediate goods and foreign exchange inelastic for all categories of import, implying that the Cameroon economy has been less open to trade in general. Some policy implications of the results are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to study China's strategy of purchasing resource commodities in international markets, what the Chinese government can do to change the current disorderly import system and how China can build purchase alliances to win in international bargaining.

A narrative inquiry is used to analyze China's strategy of purchasing resource commodities in international markets, and a game theory model is employed to study different manufacturers’ attitudes toward united negotiation and purchase alliances and the influence of government regulation on their attitude.

The paper finds that the “paradox of China's great market” in importing resource commodities is due to the constant increase of China's demand and China's disorderly import system. Government regulation will influence manufacturers’ attitudes toward united negotiation and purchase alliances. Purchase alliances may be the only effective strategy that can help China avoid price risk in international markets, because Chinese corporations cannot control foreign mines and the Chinese futures market cannot mature in a limited, short period.

The analysis in the paper lacks sufficient theory and experiences. The game theory model is very simple and is not directly linked with purchase alliances. Owing to literature constraints, there are few foreign experiences about building purchase alliances.

This paper advises the Chinese government and corporations what to do about the high import price of resource commodities and how to build purchase alliances to win in international bargaining, for example improving import regulations, recomposing the united negotiation group, forming a responsibility system and so on.

The paper forms an integrated agenda for China to build purchase alliances for importing resource commodities, and most policies could be carried out by the Chinese government immediately.

Demand for US wine imports, import planning process. Nerlovian adjustment model, short and long run elasticities, forecast The increase in wine imports, poses questions about a possible trend, and its implications for future investment opportunities of US wine companies in other wine producing countries. This article presents a model to explain the demand for wine imports in the US. Using econometric procedures we estimate coefficients of the major explanatory factors such as relative wine import prices, exchange rates, real per capita income, wine production capacity, and population. The model is used to forecast likely wine import volumes from 2003 to 2012. Even under conservative assumptions about trends of those explanatory variables we predict an important increase in US wine imports.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on trade flows in Asia Pacific countries and explores the causality between COVID-19-related shocks and trade.

The authors used two novel techniques, namely, two-stage instrumental-variables (2SIV) approach and Juodis, Karavias and Sarafids (JKS) causality test, to examine trade dynamics in the Asia Pacific region during the pandemic.

Using the monthly trade data of 17 Asia Pacific countries between January 2020 and December 2021, the results were threefold. Firstly, the empirical analysis showed that during the COVID-19 crisis, the flow of exports tended to persist idiosyncratically in comparison to the flow of imports. In particular, a specific finding was that the persistence level in exports was about 20%–25% higher than that in imports. Secondly, the authors found that the past values of COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths contain information that helps to predict exports/imports over and above the information contained in the past values of exports/imports alone. Finally, the study established that the government response and stringency indexes have a Granger-causal relationship with exports and imports.

For the foreseeable future, these findings have significant policy ramifications. Firstly, if a COVID-19 crisis-like situation emerges in the future, it will be critical for countries to maintain their competitiveness throughout the crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, while also rebuilding trade relationships wherever possible. Secondly, because information about government responses and measures can also be used to predict future trade flows, prudent management of government responses and stringent measures will be necessary in a crisis like COVID-19 to achieve the optimum level of exports and imports. At the same time, the trading partners should give up the idea of trade protection and focus on finding a way to balance the conflicting needs of imports and exports.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors, for the first time, used a 2SIV approach and JKS causality test to examine trade dynamics in the Asia Pacific region during the pandemic. In addition, the authors present the first comprehensive analysis of the evolving relationships between export and import flows and governmental policy responses under COVID-19. As a result, it contributes uniquely to both public and international economics.

This study estimated total import demand elasticities concerning income, import prices and domestic prices. A high propensity to import constitutes a significant obstacle to economic growth in Mexico since the benefits of increased exports or any other aggregate demand expansion leak to the rest of the world.

This paper estimated a Vector Error Correction Model of the total import demand elasticities concerning income, import prices and domestic prices. Total imports are a dependent variable, while Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and import and domestic prices are the independent variables.

The principal finding is that an increase of 1 peso in the Mexican GDP leads to a rise of 0.50 pesos in Mexican imports; the elasticity of import demand for prices is low. Still, the elasticity of import demand for domestic prices is 2.14 times greater than that for import prices. These results have significant economic policy implications, such as promoting the expansion of the domestic market and the national content of exports.

It is tempting to estimate the import demand function for the entire 1993–2019 period since such data is available. But by doing so, the authors would overestimate the propensity to import, given that from 1993 to 2019, the proportion of imports as a percentage of GDP went from 11.37 in 1993 to 29.66 in 2019. Therefore, it makes more sense to estimate the import demand function from 2000 to 2019, a period with a stable proportion of imports to GDP.

A high level of imports in developing countries means that much of their aggregate demand is filtered abroad. Therefore, the low impact of its exports on GDP is related to the Mexican economy’s high imports. The authors calculate this relationship with new data and methods.

Oil price shocks greatly impact the global economy, but the effects vary among countries. While higher oil prices benefit oil-exporting countries, they harm the economic performance of oil-importing nations, and vice versa for lower oil prices. However, economic relations, such as trade, can mitigate the impacts of oil price shocks on both groups. In this paper, the authors aim at estimating the effects of oil price shocks on the major net oil-exporting and net oil-importing countries while accounting for international trade.

The authors derive a reduced form of a macro model and set up a Panel VAR model to estimate the direct and indirect impacts of oil price shocks on economic growth. The sample includes data on macroeconomic variables from 30 oil-exporting and oil-importing countries that comprise more than 73 percent of the world's economy. The authors construct the spillover variables using bilateral trade matrix. To control for institutional and structural variations across the countries, they are divided into four groups of developed and developing oil-exporting and oil-importing countries.

The results reveal that all oil-exporting countries have significantly benefited from oil price shocks, although trade has dampened the effect. The positive growth effect has been more pronounced in oil-exporting developing countries. The impact of oil price shocks on oil-importing countries has been negative with a one-year delay, but not statistically significant, and trade has only had a small effect. The effect has been more substantial in oil-importing developing countries.

One of the limitations of this study is the focus on trade as the main spillover channel. Given the data availability, other channels such as foreign investment and financial markets can also be included in future studies.

Removing trade restrictions would help both oil-exporting and oil-importing countries to mitigate the negative impacts of the oil price shocks. However, the asymmetric oil-macroeconomy relationship across oil-exporting and oil-importing countries puts oil-exporting countries in a more vulnerable position as they cannot rely on trade with oil-importing countries to reduce the negative impacts of lower oil prices on their growth. Therefore, it is crucial for oil-exporting countries to reassess their oil-dependent development plans and invest their oil revenues in non-oil sectors to diversity their economies and prepare for a future with reduced dependence on oil.

The recent technological advances, structural changes, and increasing energy efficiency suggest that major oil-importing countries will become less dependent on oil in near future. As a result, oil-exporting countries will also need to undergo structural changes in order to sustain their income level. These significant changes will have important social implications, particularly in the labor market, during the transition, for which preparation will be necessary.

While the literature on the total impact of oil price shocks on either oil-exporting or oil-importing countries is rich, studies on their spillover impacts are limited. Recent research has shown that trade and migration can affect the impact of oil price shock on the economy in federated countries such as Canada. However, the trade effect on oil price shocks in the international level, where countries are subject to different regulations/restrictions and institutional variations, remains scarce. By considering the trade relationship between different groups of oil-exporting and oil-importing countries, the authors aim to contribute to the literature of the global impacts of oil price shocks on the world economy.

This study aims to examine the illicit capital movement through trade misinvoicing in Burundi, at disaggregated levels by major trading partners and by major export and import commodities.

Trade misinvoicing is estimated by comparing the trade values declared by Burundi with those declared by trading partners in a bilateral international transaction, after adjusting for the cost of freight and insurance. Disaggregated trade misinvoicing by major trading partners is computed using the Direction of Trade Statistics database of the International Monetary Fund over the period 1970–2019. Disaggregated trade misinvoicing by major trading commodities is computed using the UN-COMTRADE database over the period 1993–2019.

Exports of Burundi to most of its major trading partners are found to be underinvoiced. The top destinations for export underinvoicing are United Arab Emirates, Belgium and Germany. However, exports to UK and Switzerland are found to be overinvoiced. The major export commodities considered, coffee and gold, are found to be affected by trade misinvoicing to a great extent. On the import side, the estimation results indicate that imports of Burundi from its major trading partners are in general overinvoiced. High import overinvoicing is observed in the trade with Saudi Arabia, China and Japan. At commodity level, for the top 6 commodities considered, imports were to a great extent found to be overinvoiced. Cases of illicit capital outflows and inflows through trade misinvoicing are highlighted.

Some policy implications are drawn from this study. First, in collaboration with its development partners, the Government of Burundi should put in place measures to reduce the trade misinvoicing phenomenon, which undermines poverty reduction efforts. The study has shown which trade partners are involved and which commodities are mostly affected. Policy efforts could then be focused in that regard. Investigations at the company and transaction levels can be made to identify the mechanisms of trade misinvoicing. Second, more effort is needed in ensuring systematic and transparent reporting of international trade transactions. To fight trade misinvoicing, transparency in international trade is key, through coordinated enforcement of reporting rules.

Previous studies analyzed the problem of trade misinvoicing at an aggregated level. However, this leaves out essential information on trading partners involved in the phenomenon as well as trading commodities affected. This study investigates trade misinvoicing at disaggregated levels, at product level and by trading partner.

This study aims to identify extensive and intensive margins in exports and imports and examine whether incoming foreign direct investments (FDI) benefit local firms in Indonesia through the export and import channels.

Using Heckman’s two-step selection model to consider the potential of bias of self-selection in export–import participation, this study uses the firm-level data from 2008 to 2015 collected from Statistik Industri and proximate both export and import spillovers.

The authors found that internal factors are critical for a firm to be an exporter, signaling self-selection in exports and imports. Spillover effects from FDI (spatial properties) support export but lower import propensity and intensity.

This study implies that improving human capital (absorptive capacity) is needed to accelerate export intensity and policies supporting FDI inflows in complementary sectors (noncompeting industries) can increase export propensity and intensity and reduce imports.

This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, the proposed export spillovers model that accounts for impacts through a demonstration channel is applied to the import channel. Moreover, this study extends the model developed by Franco and Sasidharan (2010) and Yasin et al. (2022) by incorporating spatial spillover effects at the provincial level. Subsequently, the authors test whether a firm’s technological intensity determines export–import propensity and intensity. This can indicate whether specific sectors are more likely to participate in international activities based on their use of technology.

The aim of this paper is to explore the changes in the ICT and global value chains (GVCs) after the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study compared the difference between Korea’ domestic ICT industries, ICT imports and ICT exports before and after the COVID-19 outbreak by using trade data of ICT products and national economic indicators, and presents growth strategy for the ICT industry in the post-COVID 19 era. For this purpose, this study determined the causalities between Korea's imports/exports of ICT products and composite Indexes before and after COVID-19, and derived implications in the ICT industry environment after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Analysis results showed the following changes in Korea's ICT industry in the post-COVID-19 world. (1) Non-face-to-face and contact-free technologies related sectors in the ICT industry, such as the semiconductor sector, have grown exponentially; (2) as the USA has grown as the new key player, the causal relationship with China, a key player of the GVC in the pre-COVID-19 era, disappeared; and (3) the GVC of the ICT industry is not a rigid one-way vertical structure, but is changing to a flexible structure influenced by cooperation and competition between countries.

The results indicate that it is essential to constantly develop new ICT sectors that make use of non-face-to-face and contact-free technologies in the post-COVID-19 era, and the main strategies in response to the changed GVC would be taking the initiative by securing source technologies and expanding through cooperation with other GVCs and resource sharing.

This study aims to investigate the influence of image and reputation of imported fresh fruits on consumer satisfaction and purchase intentions. The moderating role of familiarity with imported fruits was also assessed.

A total of 332 Taiwanese consumers who had purchased imported Korean pears participated using an online survey and were grouped based on their familiarity to Korean pears. Multi-group analysis with structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

Image and reputation of imported Korean pears were identified as predictors of the satisfaction and purchase intention. Multi-group analysis results found the moderating effect of familiarity between image and satisfaction. Images were identified as predictors of the satisfaction and purchase intention of imported Korean pears for consumers with low familiarity, whereas image did not show any influence on satisfaction for consumers with high familiarity.

This study can contribute to the limited understanding of imported fresh fruit markets and provides insights into familiarity for consuming imported fresh fruits.