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The International Energy Agency states that the global energy intensity must reduce by 2.9% yearly before attaining Sustainable Development Goal 7.3 by 2030. However, the European Union (EU) seeking to attain a climate-neutral EU by 2050 shall require a substantial rate of reducing energy intensity. Consequently, this study aims to investigate how (clean) renewable energy, income, trade openness, technological innovation and nonrenewable energy consumption impact energy intensity for the EU countries.

The quantile regression, augmented mean group and causality techniques were used for analyses. Panel data for 26 EU nations over the 1990 and 2019 period was used.

The empirical evidence indicates that the variables have long-run equilibrium relationships. However, the analysis revealed that clean energy and income reduce energy intensity whiles trade, technological innovation and nonrenewable energy consumption increase energy intensity. An interactive term analysis shows that renewable energy and trade interact to reduce further, the negative effect of income on energy intensity. Causality results revealed a feedback connection between energy intensity and clean energy, income, trade liberalization as well as the interaction between income and trade liberalization. A one-way causality was obtained between energy intensity and technological innovation, nonrenewable energy consumption and the interaction between clean energy and income.

The results imply that EU countries stand to gain if more resources are committed to encouraging the production and consumption of cleaner/renewable energy. Advancement in policies that support renewable energy and facilitate green growth will help reduce energy intensity for the region. Trade policies that promote lower energy consumption should be strengthened.

The effect of renewable energy on energy intensity is assessed. The moderating impact of renewable energy and trade openness on the income–energy intensity relationship for the EU countries is examined. Moreover, this study uses the quantile estimation technique to assess the nonlinear effect of the explanatory variables on energy intensity.

In the recent international scenario, the rise of emerging economies, in particular, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) has gained ample of attention. The global trade flows of the BRICS countries have significantly increased during the last one-and-a-half decade. The purpose of this paper is to examine the intra-BRICS and BRICS–EU trade flows.

To study the intensity of trade among BRICS countries and with EU, the Trade Intensity Index is employed for the period 2001–2015. Balassa’s revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index is computed for the assessment of comparative advantages of exports by BRICS countries in the year 2015 in the global markets. A comparative analysis of export similarity is done for India and other BRICS countries in EU.

The findings of trade intensity showed large bilateral trade flows among BRICS member. Russia has emerged as the main trading partner with EU in BRICS. For the year 2015, the comparative study of RCA at HS-two digits and HS-four digits classification highlights marginal structural changes in the export composition of these countries. The analysis revealed that Brazil and Russia have comparative advantages in natural resource-based products, while India and China possessed comparative advantages in manufactured and processed products. The export similarity index shows the presence of competition between India and China in EU.

This paper highlights the need for closer cooperation to promote intra-BRICS trade and to make structural transformations in the basket of trading products by them to have trade benefits at large.

Numerous studies are available on bilateral trade of BRICS members. However, limited studies are available to get a holistic view of intra-BRICS trade. This paper is an attempt to examine the BRICS countries trade profile both at global levels and within the group.

The purpose of this paper is to postulate the impact of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on internationalization strategies of member countries’ firms. The study also aims to triangulate the proposed model using empirical data from PTA partner economies.

The mixed methods research design is used for the purpose of inquiry as suggested by Creswell. The inductive reasoning based on critical literature review and grounded theory methodology is used to postulate the model. Explanatory strength of the model is triangulated using empirical longitudinal trade data of Pakistan with her bilateral PTA partners, i.e. Malaysia, Mauritius, Iran, Sri Lanka and China. Internationalization indices are adapted following the Ietto-Gillies and London (2009) and Petri (1994) to measure the intensity and geographical diversification dimensions of internationalization. Country-level trade statistics are used as a proxy of firm-level data to explain the international expansion of home firms resulting from PTAs.

Empirical results confirm a strong and long-term impact of PTAs on the intensity and extensity dimensions of internationalization over post-agreement period in Pakistan and member economies. Gravity index depicts greater concentration of Pakistan's trade in FTA markets and thereby confirms the influence of PTAs on international market selection. Analysis at sectoral level depicts a contraction in services trade whereas expansion in the manufacturing firms’ export growth to member economies.

The paper extends the theory of internationalization by identifying PTAs as exogenous variable influencing internationalization strategies of member countries’ firms in a developing South Asian context. Coupled with findings from empirical data, the study identifies PTAs as a new strategic trade policy tool available to policy makers for promoting and influencing the home firms’ internationalization strategies.

Preferential market access is a pillar of the enabling clause in international trade, and as such has received scholarly attention in the recent past. This study aims to empirically examine intensity and utilisation of Uganda’s preferential market access.

Secondary data at the six-digit level of the harmonised system was sourced from the International Trade Centre’s and UN COMTRADE’s Trade Map database on trade flows to compute; trade intensity indices, Balsa’s revealed comparative advantage (RCA) indices and the existing potential trade. The time period was 2013–2022.

It is evident that Uganda is not taking full advantage of its preferential market access. The findings of the trade intensity analysis revealed that the strength of trade relations between Uganda and its preferential markets has been consistently weak in the period 2013–2022, while the intensity of trade relations with its FTA partners has been strong. The RCA results revealed that all Uganda’s agricultural exports to its preferential markets have a comparative advantage, with exports of roses reporting an exceptionally high RCA relative to other agricultural exports. The RCA results also show that the comparative advantage of Uganda’s coffee exports recovered after a significant fall in the period 2014–2022. The analysis of the existing potential for trade reveals a disproportionally low market share held by Uganda across all product lines, notably, only 2.3% of the US$29bn coffee imports in its preferential markets.

One limitation of this study is that it primarily relied on quantitative data from the International Trade Centre and thus lacks an exhaustive understanding of the circumstances at the export firm level. Qualitative data, such as interviews with exporters and policymakers, could provide deeper insights into the specific challenges and opportunities faced by Ugandan businesses in these markets.

This paper highlights the need for additional trade facilitation measures to address preferential market access bottlenecks such as stringent rules of origin and call for an aggressive government intervention in enhancing the export readiness of SMEs in Uganda. In addition, the paper is informative to Uganda’s exporters regarding the existing and potential increase in their exports to international markets.

The strength of Uganda’s trade relations with its preferential markets is empirically examined in this paper and provides useful insights for enhancing utilisation of preferential market access by beneficiary countries.

This paper aims to examine the impact of intra-industry trade on business cycle synchronization within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). ECOWAS region is characterized by limited intracommunity trade and a low level of foreign direct investment.

First, this research uses the two-digit level harmonized system classification to measure intra-industry trade, which is straightforward to interpret and compute, making it suitable for countries with low trade intensity. Second, it uses the system generalized method of moments (system-GMM) to examine the dynamic relationship between variables and address endogeneity concerns.

The results obtained from the system-GMM estimation reveal a positive and significant correlation between intra-industry trade intensity and business cycle synchronization, as well as an inhibiting effect of economic freedom on the relationship between intra-industry trade and business cycle synchronization. These results highlight the need to implement policies aimed at reducing tariff barriers, improving financial integration and intensifying production.

This research analyze the link between intra-industry trade and business cycle synchronization within the ECOWAS. It also analyze the role of economic freedom on the link between intra-industry trade and business cycle synchronization.

Bilateral trade between Egypt and China has expanded substantially in recent years. Few studies however have focused on the understanding of this trade relationship. The purpose of this paper is to fill a void in the literature by examining and understanding the two countries' trade pattern.

In order to achieve the objectives of the paper, and in the light of the pool of literature and availability of data, the authors relied on qualitative methods to analyze the composition of trade between Egypt and China. In addition, the authors employed trade intensity index, intra‐industry trade index, and examined the trade complementarity to capture the dynamics and perspectives of bilateral trade between the two countries.

Results show low values in Egypt's trade intensity index, implying that Egyptian trade with China is less than it should be. The low values of the intra‐industry trade index suggest smaller trade between the two countries' firms in the same industry. The study clearly shows that there are few areas where there is an overlap in the two countries' comparative advantage. The trade complementarity analysis tends to suggest that the complementarity for China to export to Egypt is increasing, while that for Egypt to export to China is declining.

Given the lack of research that examines and compares trade between the two countries, the paper provides an in‐depth understanding of the patterns of trade between them and the driving forces behind such dynamics, which is pertinent to best capture the opportunities presented by the Chinese market. Also, the findings can be used to draw policy implications for promoting future trade and cooperation between Egypt and China.

The concept of co-movement has witnessed a resurgence in the international finance literature in recent years after the black swan events. This might be due to a renewed focus on globalization and financial market integration in the world over. The purpose of this paper is to examine the dynamic linkages in the foreign exchange market resulting from recent globalization and financial market integration in Africa.

A conceptual framework was adapted from the extant literature and was used as the basis of modeling foreign exchange market in Africa. This paper adopts a quantitative research approach and opted for dynamic panel data analysis to empirically unearth the determinants of foreign exchange market co-movement.

It is interesting to note that exchange rate co-movements were externally determined. Robust support was found for trade intensity, competition and world interest rate on foreign exchange rates co-movement, but regional interest rate differential decreased it. These findings clearly demonstrate the level of financial development and challenges that sometimes exist in exchange rate policy implementation by policy makers in Africa.

Future research might incorporate bilateral investment into the model of exchange rate correlation.

Studies focussing on simultaneous consideration of intensity, trade competition and capital account openness to exchange rate correlations in the contexts of Africa are almost non-existent, and this study makes an important contribution in not only addressing this imbalance but also more importantly improving the relatively parsimonious literature on foreign exchange co-movement.

This chapter investigates how international trade affects pollution using annual data from 34 Asian countries for the period 1970–2019. Following the work of Antweiler, Copeland, and Taylor (2001), the authors divide the impact into three effects – scale, technique, and composition effects. The scale of economic activity drives pollution demand. The technique effect reflects increased willingness to bear the costs of abating pollution as a country gets more prosperous because of increased international trade. International trade changes the composition of output in a country and therefore the level of pollution as different goods are produced with different pollution intensities. This is called the composition effect. This chapter measures pollution using carbon dioxide emissions (metric tons per capita) obtained from the United States Energy Information Administration. This study estimates a regression model that provides estimates of the magnitudes of trade’s impact on pollution as per the aforesaid three effects. The authors find that the scale and the composition effects of pollution are positive, but the technique effect is negative, and that the net effect is negative (international trade leads to a lower level of emission) when the underlying model is linear, but it is positive (international trade leads to a higher level of emission when non-linearities are considered).

The proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will become a large trade agreement in Asia, which has brought together the ten members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five of the neighbors’ countries. Under the trend of globalization, the progress of the transportation industry and regional integration will increase the volume of trade, therefore maritime performance is intrinsically linked to trade. In fact, few studies have examined regional integration in the context of seaborne. This paper aims to use the cluster analysis and Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood (PQML) gravity model to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon and relation between trade and marine transportation.

In this paper, hierarchical clustering analysis and tree diagrams are used to identify functional areas characterized by bilateral trade intensity and bilateral liner shipping connectivity indices. Regional reorganizations that have occurred within Asian countries were studied. This study illustrates that these trading blocs have a positive impact on trade when maritime transport, production and trading networks have developed between regions. A gravity model was constructed using worldwide trade data for 2007, 2010 and 2015. The study considered free trade agreement (FTA)/common market (CM) of EU, RCEP and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as regional dummies and designed a real trade bloc induction variable. In addition, the study did not use the commonly adopted ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation but used the PQML method to estimate the gravity equation to overcome the problem of a large number of zero trade observations. Preliminary results show that regional integration cannot guarantee the establishment of intraregional trade but depends on the stage of economic development and regional industrial characteristics.

The major findings are summarized as follows. Both liner shipping connectivity and logistics performance have significant advantages with positive coefficients in each regression results. The creation of intraregional trade is not guaranteed, depending on the characteristics of the trade and the stage of economic development of the region. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than the EU. Instead, the “nominal” intra-RCEP trade was significantly below the “real” trading blocs. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than that of the EU. Instead, “nominal” intra-RCEP trade is much lower than “real” trading blocs. The real trading bloc between East Asia and Taiwan clearly exists, and the bloc phenomenon is becoming more and more significant. This result shows that Taiwan’s trade flow with East Asia is higher than the normal level relationship implied by its corresponding economic and geographical conditions.

This paper focuses on new empirical work done for this study is on the potential impact on trade. Earlier studies that have discussed and/or provided estimates of the benefits to the RCEP plan from improved transport and supply chain connectivity are cited. Marine transportation performance inherently links to economies of commerce. Few studies have examined regional integration in the context of maritime transportation, which reflects the lack of a mix of trade economists and maritime logistics research in the existing literature. This paper attempts to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon formed by regional integration (such as RCEP) and the relation between trade and marine transportation. With the official entry into force of the RCEP in 2020, it will promote increased trade and demand for logistics and maritime transport services in East Asia.

This paper aimed to examine the relationship between green logistics management (GLM) practices and export intensity of Thai SMEs in food and drinks manufacturing. The research involved carrying out in-depth interviews with ten experts to shed light on factors of GLM practices. The authors used a questionnaire to survey the data amongst 89 SME exporters through purposive sampling with valid 52 responses. The managerial issues related to export intensity, GLM practices, with regards to whether firms followed ISO 14001 and whether they had an employee(s) responsible for environmental management. The findings suggest that greater GLM practices being applied lead to higher export intensity in SME. The results indicate that most SMEs apply GLM practices in all dimensions to gain the benefits from the export market. It also emerged that those following ISO 14001 and/or having an employee(s) were associated with having higher export intensity than those who did not engage in these practices.