Introduction

The law of business cycles dictates the inevitability of recessions. In terms of location, recessions can be either global, such as the financial crisis of 2007, or regional, such as Argentina’s 2001 economic and financial crisis. Recessions can be triggered either by endogenous factors (e.g., European Periphery Debt Crisis) or by exogenous factors (e.g., the current COVID-19 pandemic). The high level of global economic integration leads to the fast transmission of local economic crises, yet also to the enhanced stimulus of efficient resource allocation in terms of both relative price changes and effective value chain advancements. The main channels of these spillovers are financial and trade linkages. Specifically, according to the seminal account of Frankel and Rose (Economic Journal 108(449), 1009–1025, 1998) trade partners with more intense trade flows have correlated business cycles, whereas, for example, Kodres and Pritsker (Journal of Finance 57, 769–799, 2002) highlight in a prime attempt of a now-vast and growing literature, the role of investors’ adjustment of portfolios’ exposures in the transmission of idiosyncratic shocks. Within the above context, understanding how international trade is affected by the characteristics of the labor market and the expansion strategies of firms and how financial markets impact the macroeconomic environment (indisputably, the function of financial markets is vital for the development of international trade) is of crucial importance for policymakers. Moreover, the role of the environment in ensuring sustainable growth and the characteristics of the corporate landscape should also be considered. Of equal importance is the examination of the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy in smoothing the intensity of business cycles. The present volume, titled Money, Trade and Finance: Recent Trends and Methodological Issues, attempts to shed some light on the above issues by presenting a collection of chapters divided into the following six parts: (1) liquidity, trade flows and international factor mobility, (2) corporate landscape advancement, (3) trends in policy analysis, (4) financial markets and the macroeconomy, (5) trends in econometric methodology and (6) international business—expansion and environmental issues.