Publications

The KCG has various series of publications to provide research findings and policy implications to different interested groups, e.g., students, academics, policy makers and the public.

Trade Recovery Requires Firm-specific Initiatives, Trade Policies and Global Collaboration

9th June 2020
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the global value chains (GVCs) substantially as it struck at their core regions, including China, Europe and the United States (Seric et al., 2020). According to a recent estimate of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) the merchandise trade volume worldwide would fall by between 13% to 32% in 2020. It is highly likely that the COVID-19 determined decline in world trade will be more substantial than the historical trade fall brought by the global financial crisis more than ten years ago[...]

Friends like this: The Impact of the US – China Trade War on Global Value Chains

8th June 2020
KCG Secretary
Authors: Holger Görg and Haiou Mao (The World Economy, 2020, Vol. 43(7), 1776-1791)

This paper considers the indirect impact the recent tariff increases between the US and China can have in third countries through links in global supply chains. We combine data from inputoutput relationships, imports and tariffs, to calculate the impact of the tariff increases by both the US and China on cumulative tariffs for other countries and thus hurt trade partners further downstream in global supply chains[...]

KCG Policy Paper No. 5: Lagging behind? German Foreign Direct Investment in Africa

3rd June 2020
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Julian Glitsch, Olivier Godart, Holger Görg, Saskia Mösle, and Frauke Steglich

German Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa is lagging behind China, France, the Netherlands, the UK, the US, and other economies. It represented only 1 percent of the German total FDI stock abroad in 2018 and is concentrated in few African countries[…]

UNIDO Published an Opinion Piece on GVC Impact of COVID-19 in Cooperation with KCG

17th April 2020
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
The outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 damages the global health and challenges the world economy. One key aspect here is the global value chains which have been extensively developed since decades. Experts from the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the Kiel Centre for Globalization (KCG) at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy[...]

Chain of Blame: A Multi-Country Study of Consumer Reactions towards Supplier Hypocrisy in Global Supply Chains

23rd March 2020
KCG Secretary
Authors: Nils Christian Hoffmann, Juelin Yin, and Stefan Hoffmann (Management International Review, 2020, Vol. 68, 247-286)

Recent research identified firms’ hypocritical behavior as a major threat to their reputation among consumers. This paper expands the dyadic relationship to a triadic relationship, integrating the hypocritical behavior of suppliers in global supply chains. Introducing a chain of blame[…]

KCG Working Paper No. 21: Does the Belt and Road Initiative Stimulate Chinese Exports? The Role of State-Owned Enterprises

16th January 2020
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Holger Görg and Haiou Mao


This paper evaluates firms’ exporting responses to BRI and considers their heterogeneity in ownership types, product types, regional origin and trade mode. This is done by analyzing firm-product-destination level customs data from 2011 to 2015 in a gravity model framework

Introducing Dominant Currency Pricing in the ECB’s Global Macroeconomic Model

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Georgios Georgiadis and Saskia Mösle (International Finance, 2020, 23(2): 234–256)

A large share of global trade being priced and invoiced primarily in U.S. dollar rather than the exporter's or the importer's currency has important implications for the transmission of shocks. We introduce this “dominant‐currency pricing” (DCP) into ECB‐Global, the ECB's macroeconomic model for the global economy. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to incorporate DCP into a major global macroeconomic model used at central banks or international organisations. In ECB‐Global, DCP affects in particular the role of expenditure‐switching and the U.S. dollar exchange rate for spillovers: In case of a shock in a non‐U.S. economy that alters the value of its currency multilaterally[…]

Rules of Origin and the Profitability of Trade Deflection

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Gabriel Felbermayr, Feodora Teti and Erdal Yalcin (Journal of International Economics, Vol. 121, Nov. 2019, 103248)

When a country grants preferential tariffs to another, either reciprocally in a free trade agreement (FTA) or unilaterally, rules of origin (RoOs) are defined to determine whether a product is eligible for preferential treatment. RoOs exist to avoid that exports from third countries enter through the member with the lowest tariff (trade deflection)[…]

Revisiting the Euro’s trade cost and welfare effects

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Gabriel Felbermayr and Marina Steininger (Forthcoming, Journal of Economics and Statistics)

When, about twenty years ago, the Euro was created, one objective was to facilitate intra-European trade by reducing transaction costs. Has the Euro delivered? Using sectoral trade data from 1995 to 2014 and applying structural gravity modeling, we conduct an ex post evaluation of the European Monetary Union (EMU). In aggregate data, we find a significant average trade effect for goods of almost 8 percent, but a much smaller effect for services trade[…]