Monthly Report No. 06/2020

Chart of the month Ricardian equivalence does not hold in practice by Leon Podkaminer Opinion Corner COVID-19 is complicating global trade debates by Julia Grübler Trade policy used to be a niche topic of limited interest to the public. In recent years, however, it has received a much wider audience, making it to the front pages of newspapers. The current global health crisis has pushed some major trade policy issues – including disputes between China and the US – into the background. But they will flare up again, once the biggest uncertainties related to COVID-19 have been weathered, potentially in more complex ways than before. Trade policy’s about-turn in times of global health distress by Julia Grübler and Oliver Reiter Over the last three years, trade policy has been characterised by a global revival of tariffs as trade policy instruments and retaliatory measures. Today, trade policy is in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to a reversal of recent tariff increases, while non-tariff measures are on the rise. The latter can have far-reaching consequences; and with imprudent use may even deepen the crisis. A network of free trade agreements by Oliver Reiter The number of free trade agreements has been steadily increasing over the years. Do overlapping trade agreements have an additional effect, on top of the widely documented positive effect that trade agreements have on their own? In this article, we investigate how measures developed from a network perspective can add to our understanding of how free trade agreements influence trade flows. Monthly and quarterly statistics for Central, East and Southeast Europe