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International trade is the key element of globalisation and closer economic and political cooperation between countries. Regional integration is an important driver of closer trade ties among countries. In this context, the article focuses on analysing the factors, influencing the dynamics of trade patterns of the Baltic States. The research method used in the article is the gravity model of trade, which rests on the key assumption that trade between countries is defined by the size of the economies and the distance between the countries. The gravity equation estimates showed that the membership of the Baltic States in the EU had a positive effect on the export levels of the Baltic States to other EU members. On the other hand, the membership in the EU is not the main trade stimulating factor. The more important factor for the Baltic States’ exports is the former economic ties with Russia. An analysis also revealed that the Baltic States have many important trade partners with different levels of income. This finding does not support the Linder hypothesis which states that the main trading partners should have a rather similar level of income.

This paper examines the implications of global production sharing for economic integration in East Asia, with emphasis on the behavior of trade flows in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis. While trade in parts and components and final assembly within production networks (“network trade”) has generally grown faster than total world trade in manufacturing, the degree of dependence of East Asia on this new form of international specialization is proportionately larger than elsewhere in the world. Network trade has certainly strengthened economic interdependence among countries in the region, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) playing a pivotal role as the premier center of final assembly. However, contrary to the popular belief, this has not lessened the dependence of the export dynamism of these countries on the global economy. The rise of global production sharing has strengthened the case for a global, rather than regional, approach to trade and investment policymaking.

The development of Southeast European countries (SEECs) depends crucially on international trade. This paper empirically analyzes intraindustry trade between SEECs and the European Union using bilateral trade data at the combined nomenclature four-digit level from 1996 to 2004. We analyze trade patterns for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro. Applying the Grubel-Lloyd index indicates changes in the trade of manufactured goods between the SEECs and the European Union during the first years of the Stabilization and Association Agreement implementation period.

The emergence of global value chains (GVCs) and their rapid expansion over the past two decades has transformed the global trade environment. GVCs involve task-based trade across multiple stages of the production process that take place across a number of different countries, in which multiple inputs and exports of intermediate goods and services are necessary to produce a final good, which may also be exported. GVC-oriented trade is seen to offer significant opportunities for developing countries, especially smaller ones, to benefit from global integration by changing the nature of competitiveness. With competition for GVC investment taking place in a truly global market, factor competitiveness relative to other countries matters a lot. In this context, the purpose of this note is to shed some light for policymakers, in this case specifically in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries, on where to focus efforts to drive competitiveness for GVC participation. This is a data-intensive exercise that requires indicators to represent underlying capabilities, disaggregated international trade data, and finally, a classification of which products are likely to be trade within GVCs.

Recent years have seen a substantial reduction in trade policy and other barriers inhibiting developing country participation in the world trade. Lower barriers have contributed to a dramatic shift in the pattern of developing country trade -away from dependence on commodity exports to much greater reliance on manufactures and services. In addition, exports to other developing countries have become much more important. These changes have profound implications for the role played by developing countries in the world economy and the trade system. Developing countries have become major players in the global economy. The outward-oriented strategies of many economies in emerging Asia have been reflected in high trade growth and a steady increase in their share in the world trade.

It is frequently stated that Turkey's trade orientation has shifted in the last decade away from Europe and more towards the East, specifically Arab countries and Middle East. However, comprehensive presentation of the situation is lacking, causing concern over the validity of the statement. This paper examines the foreign trade of Turkey for years 1995 to 2012. The analysis focuses on a number of country groups and product categories. The analysis confirms the shift away from EU and towards not only Arab countries but Asia as a whole, primarily due to gas imports from Russia. It is observed that Turkey's exports are becoming more focused towards manufactured goods and increasing in technological complexity. An interesting observation is the increase in the share of “commodities and transactions not elsewhere classified”, especially with the Arab countries.

This paper builds a small-open-economy nonscale-growth model with negative population growth and investigates the relationship between trade patterns and per capita consumption growth. Under free trade, if the population growth rate is negative and its absolute value is small, the home country becomes an agricultural country. Then the long-run growth rate of per capita consumption is positive and depends on the world population growth rate. On the other hand, if the population growth rate is negative and its absolute value is large, the home country becomes a manufacturing country. Then the long-run growth rate of per capita consumption is positive and depends on both the home country and the world population growth rates. Moreover, the home country is better off under free trade than under autarky in terms of per capita consumption growth irrespective of whether the population growth is positive or negative.

Shipping goods internationally is risky and takes time. Therefore, trading partners not only have to agree on the specification and the price of a good, but also on the timing of payments. To allocate risk and to finance the time gap between production and sale, a range of different payment contracts is utilized, broadly classified into exporter finance (Open Account), importer finance (Cash in Advance) and bank finance (Letter of Credit). I study the optimal choice between these three types of payment contracts considering one shot transactions, repeated transactions and implications for trade. The equilibrium contract is determined by financial market characteristics and contracting environments in both the source and the destination country. Trade increases in enforcement probabilities and decreases in financing costs. The latter effect is the larger, the longer the time needed for trade. I use a panel of bilateral trade flows to test these predictions, running gravity regressions that include interaction terms between distance and financing costs. Results are in line with the model, highly significant and economically relevant.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is arguably the first case study of what may be expected from the increasing number of preferential trade agreements involving both developed and developing economies. Ten years after the treaty's inception, it is time to assess how its outcomes compare with initial expectations. The articles in this symposium issue provide insights into the effects of NAFTA on economic geography, trade, wages and migration, and foreign investment from Mexico's perspective. The contributions paint a complex post-NAFTA reality characterized by persistent intra-bloc trade barriers, interregional inequality within Mexico, labor market outcomes that seem closely tied to migration patterns and international trade and investment, and foreign investment flows that appear weakly related to trade agreements.

Institutions—quality of contract enforcement, property rights, shareholder protection, and the like—have received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet trade theory has not considered the implications of institutional differences, beyond treating them simply as different technologies or taxes. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we propose a simple model of international trade in which institutional differences are modelled within the framework of incomplete contracts. We show that doing so reverses many of the conclusions obtained by equating institutions with productivity. Institutional differences as a source of comparative advantage imply, among other things, that the less developed country may not gain from trade and factor prices may actually diverge as a result of trade. Second, we test empirically whether institutions act as a source of trade, using data on U.S. imports disaggregated by country and industry. The empirical results provide evidence of “institutional content of trade”: institutional differences are an important determinant of trade flows. Copyright 2007, Wiley-Blackwell.

The paper analyses international trade of goods of the Republic of Croatia by counties from 2001 to 2010. The analysis determines the significance of particular counties in the international trade of goods. Beside level of international trade, other indicators like imports dependence, exports propensity, openness and regional structure of exports are used in order to determine importance of international trade for each of individual county. Significant regional differences are found in the international trade pattern in various counties. The paper also analyses the exports concentration and specialisation of Croatian counties. Apart from exports structure defined by NKD 2007 classification, paper further deals with specialisation according to technology structure of exports. In the concluding chapter, the paper explores the connection between export propensity of particular counties, specialisation and the economic development. In accordance to the recent theoretical and empirical research, in the case of Croatian counties, a significant correlation between exports features, specialisation pattern and openness on one side and economic development on the other side is also found. Counties specialised in exports of high technology products are usually more developed than counties specialised in exports of lower technology products.

Background We consider the potential for infection to spread in a farm population from the primary outbreak farm via livestock movements prior to disease detection. We analyse how this depends on the time of the year infection occurs, the species transmitting, the length of infectious period on the primary outbreak farm, location of the primary outbreak, and whether a livestock market becomes involved. We consider short infectious periods of 1 week, 2 weeks and 4 weeks, characteristic of acute contagious livestock diseases. The analysis is based on farms in Scotland from 1 January 2003 to 31 July 2007. Results The proportion of primary outbreaks from which an acute contagious disease would spread via movement of livestock is generally low, but exhibits distinct annual cyclicity with peaks in May and August. The distance that livestock are moved varies similarly: at the time of the year when the potential for spread via movements is highest, the geographical spread via movements is largest. The seasonal patterns for cattle differ from those for sheep whilst there is no obvious seasonality for pigs. When spread via movements does occur, there is a high risk of infection reaching a livestock market; infection of markets can amplify disease spread. The proportion of primary outbreaks that would spread infection via livestock movements varies significantly between geographical regions. Conclusions In this paper we introduce a set-up for analysis of movement data that allows for a generalized assessment of the risk associated with infection spreading from a primary outbreak farm via livestock movements, applying this to Scotland, we assess how this risk depends upon the time of the year, species transmitting, location of the farm and other factors.