A new Asia-Pacific free trade agreement set to enter into force on 1 January 2022 will create the world’s largest trading bloc by economic size, according to an UNCTAD study. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) includes 15 East Asian and Pacific nations of different economic sizes and stages of development. Read More Here
Differences between support for globalization among high-skilled and low-skilled workers—and gaps in the optimism the two groups feel about their prospects for upward mobility—have grown in poor countries as well as rich ones. As a result, overall backing for economic integration is eroding. Read More Here
In planning for the year ahead, economic policymakers should pay less attention to the consensus economic forecast and more attention to today’s everything asset and credit market bubble. Maybe then when those bubbles burst, they will not be caught out as flatfooted as they were in 2008. Read More Here
China’s emphasis on data as a factor of production breaks not only with Marxist economic theory but also with the classical English economics that Marx adapted. From the standpoint of economic theory, it is perhaps the most anti-communist innovation of the past century, and all the more remarkable as a programmatic statement of the Chinese […]
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on maritime trade volumes in 2020 was less severe than initially expected but its knock-on effects will be far-reaching and could transform maritime transport, according to UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2021. The report shows that maritime trade contracted by 3.8% in 2020, reflecting an initial shock, but it rebounded later in […]
The world’s biggest energy companies are producing the most cash in years, but don’t expect them to spend it on bringing on fresh supplies of oil and natural gas to combat shortages in Europe and China this winter. Read More Here
Google searches for “stagflation” this month are on track to hit their highest level since 2008, while Goldman Sachs wrote the term is now “the most common word in client conversations.” Read More Here
Amid persistent concerns about the impact of Delta and newer variants of the coronavirus, supply-side constraints are tightening and rising inflation is becoming a significant restraint on policy support that could keep growth on track. Read More Here
It is unclear whether current widespread product shortages are merely a temporary disruption or evidence of a global production meltdown. But today’s supply shocks offer striking parallels with the 2008 global financial crisis, and may require a similarly bold policy response. Read More Here
International merchandise trade is booming. Exports of many countries are growing at double digit rates and global trade has already surpassed the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. However, the global trade recovery hides an important asymmetry: small economies and the poorest countries are falling behind. Their recovery is not yet in sight. Read More Here
looking beyond borders 