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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.

This paper aims to exploit a new trade database to explore the extent to which trade, and the industrial division of labor which it represents, is regional in nature.

The analysis focuses especially on intermediates trade, in three key regions – the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN+3 – which together represent 78 percent of global trade.

The results indicate that levels of regional integration in trade and changes in that integration vary by region and by direction of flow. Notably, the EU has higher levels of intra‐regional trade than the other two. These results vary by technology, with high‐tech trade less regionally biased than others.

Trade data has been little used in the debate on the regionalization of business activity. In addition, the paper highlights trends, not just in total trade, but within intermediate products and by technology.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an early assessment of India’s South-South cooperation for trade and technology (SSTT) with East Africa, focusing on Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It aims to analyse the role of SSTT in providing support to targeted sectors.

The paper examines SSTT, focusing on India and East Africa over a specific period (2000–2016) of its emergence, and extends the public sponsorship literature in international business (IB) to better understand the relationship between SSTT and value addition – applying to a particular case study of SSTT interventions in spices.

The paper highlights SSTT as a pathway to support value addition in global value chains (GVCs). Trade between India and East African countries has grown, with three developments over the period of analysis in particular: shifting trade patterns, growing share of intermediate goods trade and differences in GVC insertion. However, East African exports are largely of lower value. Capacity building to support processing capability and thriving markets can encourage greater value addition. Preliminary findings suggest early gains at the margins, as SSTT interventions have been focusing on capacity boosting with buffering and bridging mechanisms for increased volume of trade. Moving up the value chain however requires that specific value-enhancing activities continue to be targeted, building on regional capacities. Our high-level case study for spices suggests that activities are starting to have a positive effect; however, more focus is needed to specifically target value creation before export and in particular higher levels of processing.

While findings are preliminary, policy implications emerge to guide SSTT interventions. There is capacity for building higher value-added supply chains as is evident among East African countries that trade with each other – future SSTT programmes could tap into this and help build capacity in these higher-value value chains. Future SSTT programmes can take a comprehensive approach by aiming at interventions at key points of the value chain, and especially at points that facilitate higher value addition than initial processing. An example is that Ethiopia and Rwanda are likely to benefit from an expanded spice industry, but the next phase should be towards building processing for value-addition components of the value chain, such as through trade policies, incentivising exporters to add value to items before export. From a development perspective, more analysis needs to be done on the value chain itself – for instance, trade facilitation measures to help processers engage in value chains and to access investments for increasing value add activities. (iv), Future research should examine more closely the development impacts of SSTT, namely, the connection between increased trade, local job creation and sustained innovation, as it is these tangible benefits that will help countries in the Global South realise the benefits of increased trade.

The paper underlines how the SSTT approach can contribute to the critical IB and GVCs literature using a theoretical grounded approach from public sponsorship theory, and with a unique lens of development cooperation between countries in the global south and its emerging impact on development outcomes in these countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of aggregate and dis-aggregated import demand for Ghana for the period from 1985 to 2015.

The study employed the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach.

The long-run finding show that aggregate import demand (AIMD) is positively determined by exports of goods and services and consumer spending, but negatively determined by foreign exchange reserves. It is found that consumer spending is the key positive determinant of the import demand of consumer goods, while foreign exchange reserves, trade liberalisation policy and relative import price are negative determinants. It is found that import demand of intermediate goods is positively determined by consumer spending, government spending and investment spending. The long-run findings further confirm that import demand of capital goods is negatively determined by relative import price. In the short run, the findings suggest that AIMD is positively affected by exports of goods and services, investment spending and consumer spending, but negatively affected by foreign exchange reserves. Import demand of consumer goods is positively influenced by consumer spending, but negatively determined by relative import price. Finally, import demand for intermediate goods is found to be positively determined by investment spending and government spending, while import demand for capital goods is positively associated with exports of goods and services and trade liberalisation policy in the previous period.

A number of studies have looked at the determinants of import demand, focussing on the aggregated import demand. This study adds the component of dis-aggregated import demand, as it assist in dealing with the issues of bias.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether China's exports can effectively improve the global competitiveness of other BRICS countries' exports from the perspective of intra-BRICS export trade.

This paper extends the multinational trade model and analyzes the mechanism of the technological upgrading effect from the perspective of dynamic general equilibrium theory. In addition, this paper uses the export panel data of 217 products with three-digit SITC codes from China to other BRICS member countries from 2000 to 2016 and constructs a dynamic empirical model for parameter estimation.

The results show that China's exports to other BRICS member countries can effectively promote the technological improvement of other BRICS member countries' export products. In particular, the formal establishment of the BRICS organization in 2010 has significantly improved the efficiency of China's export technology optimization.

In the background of the prevalence of anti-globalization and the proliferation of protectionism, this paper proves that the deepening of trade cooperation between other BRICS members with China can help optimize their own international trade competitiveness and allow China's development dividend to benefit more countries and people.

There has been a period of slow but a steady increase in wage inequality in the Indian manufacturing sector since the mid‐1980s, which has gone hand‐in‐hand with an increase in the relative employment of skilled workers across all industries in the same period. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the co‐movement of relative employment and wages of skilled workers can be attributed to the changes in trade policy that has occurred in the Indian economy since the mid‐1980s.

The two dominant theoretical perspectives on why trade reforms lay lead to wage inequality are Heckscher–Ohlin theory and trade‐induced skill‐biased technological change (SBTC). The paper evaluates the applicability of these theoretical perspectives to the Indian case using disaggregated industry data from Annual Survey of Industries from 1973 to 1997.

Evidence was found of the validity of both the two dominant theoretical perspectives on wage inequality to explain the co‐movement in wage inequality and relative skill intensity in Indian manufacturing, with both variables increasing in the 1990s. Trade‐induced technological progress has led to an increase in relative skill intensity and wage inequality within industries. At the same time, the decline in protection that seems to have occurred more in unskilled labour‐intensive industries has led to a relative fall in the economy‐wide return to unskilled labour relative to skilled labour. Therefore, trade reforms have led to a widening of wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers, and an increase in relative skill intensity in Indian manufacturing.

The paper contributes to support of the trade‐induced SBTC hypothesis which may provide a consistent explanation of why many countries in the south experienced increases in wage inequality with the onset of trade liberalisation.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges for the earth that is mostly driven by human actions. The rapid increase of world population forces the businesses to reach the economies of scale. Digital and technological transformation of the world, thanks to “Industry 4.0,” provides new opportunities for production as well as international trade. Today, the green production process of an imported product could produce lower emissions than producing domestically. However, the greenest countries in the world are developed ones such as Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria. Furthermore, nearly half of the goods' export belongs to developing economies. This chapter focuses on the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission of 18 countries that produce approximately 75% of the world's CO₂ emission and its determinants. The main target of the study is to investigate the impact of export on carbon emission. The convergence estimation and responsiveness scores (RSs) of countries' CO₂ emission levels are performed to find carbon emission convergent groups and the impact of emission determinants. Besides, the study divides the export of countries into broad economic categories (BEC) and evaluates the impact of capital goods, intermediate goods, and consumption goods groups over the emission. The findings demonstrate that intermediate goods export leads to 7.4% deviation of CO₂ emission whereas the effects of capital and consumption goods are neutral. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first research discussing the BEC classification impact over the carbon emission of that 18 countries. The results help to take necessary and effective measures of supranational organizations to have a sustainable trade policy especially for the post-Covid-19 period of the world.

The role of money and monetary policy of the central bank in pursuing macroeconomic stability has significantly changed over the period since the end of World War II. Globalization, liberalization, integration, and transition processes generally shaped the crucial milestones of the macroeconomic development and substantial features of economic policy and its framework in Europe. Policy-driven changes together with variety of exogenous shocks significantly affected the key features of macroeconomic environment on the European continent that fashioned the framework and design of monetary policies.

This chapter examines the key basis of the central bank’s monetary policy on its way to pursue and preserve the internal and external stability of the purchasing power of money. Substantial elements of the monetary policy like objectives and strategies are not only generally introduced but also critically discussed according to their accuracy, suitability, and reliability in the changing macroeconomic conditions. Brief overview of the Eurozone common monetary policy milestones and the past Eastern bloc countries’ experience with a variety of exchange rate regimes provides interesting empirical evidence on origins and implications of vital changes in the monetary policy conduction in Europe and the Eurozone.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of trading with China on Botswana’s domestic and third markets. The paper also assesses the structure and magnitude of Botswana–China bilateral trade.

The paper used descriptive statistics such as graphic analysis to describe and summarize the basic features of the data. To reach conclusions that extend beyond the immediate data alone, the study applied Chenery Decomposition Approach and also applied the extension of Constant Market Share (CMS) analysis.

Botswana mainly exports primary products to China and imports intermediate and capital goods, which are mainly used as inputs in the development of infrastructure in the country. Increased imports from China into Botswana’s domestic market has mainly replaced imports from other countries, and China’s textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) exports gained market share from Botswana’s TCF exports in the third markets, i.e. South Africa. Unlike Lesotho, the loss of market share by Botswana’s TCF exports in the South African market increased over the period under study. The Botswana Government needs to consider ways of enhancing Botswana’s TCF export competitiveness and learn lessons from China in relation to enhancing productivity in the TCF and other exporting industries.

Because of lack of data, this paper failed to estimate the impact of import penetration in the manufacturing subsectors and analyze the rapidly growing Botswana–China bilateral trade in services. There has been no estimate of the impact of intermediate and capital goods on production costs of Botswana’s productive sectors. Lastly, because of lack of data, there have been no estimates of Botswana’s consumer surplus generated from consuming relatively low-priced goods from China.

This is the first study to carry out an empirical analysis of the Botswana–China trade relation. The study will be of value to academia and to policymakers who are interested in studying the China–Africa relation.

In the last two decades, the dependence of Taiwan’s manufacturing production on imported intermediate inputs has steadily risen. Meanwhile, the market share of imported consumable manufacture products has also increased. The steady rise of both import shares may not be explained by price fact or since the relative import prices have shown no decreasing trend. The scenario of constantly buying more imported goods when they are not cheaper can be treated as a preference change in favor of imported goods, which may be caused by the popularity of outsourcing, increasing product varieties and persistent trade barriers, as literatures indicated. Traditional macroeconomic models primarily consider the price mechanism in their import demand estimates, with no concern for changes in import preferences. Neglecting changing import preferences in a rapid globalization environment may yield biased empirical results. In this article, we incorporate the import preference factor into a single-country Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model and use it firstly to quantify the scale of preferences change and then to test how the preferences change affects the effects of trade policy. The empirical results with and without the concern of import preferences change are compared to yield the scale of bias caused by neglecting the change.