Giorgia Giovannetti, Enrico Marvasi, Giorgio Ricchiuti
{"title":"The Future of Global Value Chains and International Trade: An EU Perspective","authors":"Giorgia Giovannetti, Enrico Marvasi, Giorgio Ricchiuti","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00252-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00252-4","url":null,"abstract":"The Great Recession, Brexit, the trade war between China and the USA, the pandemic crisis, and the regional wars (Russia-Ukraine and the Middle East) have opened the way to a reorganization of the global value chains and international trade. The EU in particular is facing crucial challenges regarding the internal equilibria between member countries as well as the external relations and the balance between superpowers in an uncertain geopolitical landscape. In this opening article of the Special Issue on “The Future of Global Value Chains and International Trade: An EU perspective”, we review the evolution of international trade and discuss the recent changes in the EU’s trade patterns looking at intermediate, consumption, and capital goods. We provide an overview of the contents of the Special Issue, which we organized by theme. Our analysis raises some issues and sets the stage for the following analyses and future research.","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":"os32 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135267501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Innovate to Resist: Are Innovators Shielded from External Shocks?","authors":"Stefano Iandolo, Anna Maria Ferragina","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00245-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00245-3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Economic shocks are often difficult to predict, as they are independent of the will of the economic agents affected and, therefore, exogenous to their choices. However, the effects of such shocks when they occur impact on national economies, business performance, and employment of individuals, thus shaking countries’ economies, and often with long-lasting effects. Although it is difficult to predict their occurrence, it is possible to withstand the consequences of exogenous shocks and be more resilient should they occur. Investing in order to be at the frontier of innovation is one of the tools that economies can adopt to protect their agents, thus defending them from the downturns that can result from unexpected economic events. In this paper, we study whether being more innovative does protect Italian provinces from the negative effects of exogenous shocks, with a focus on employment levels. The object of the analysis is, more specifically, the role of the innovation stock in protecting provinces’ employment levels from trade and economic shocks. The analysis, conducted in the period 2000–2018, examines the effect of trade shock on Italian provinces’ employment levels, and the role of the innovation stock in preserving those levels. Our results confirm that innovative provinces are more protected from external trade and economic shocks, with this effect being evident in both Southern and Northern regions, and despite the level of internationalization of provinces.","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":"240 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136057625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why Do You Make Things So Complicated? Understanding the Texts of Regulations During the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Vincenzo Alfano, Massimo Guarino","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00243-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00243-5","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The last two years have been characterized by a considerable increase in the number of national and local regulations to contain and fight the spread of the COVID-19 contagion. The literature suggests that poor readability of regulations comes with a significant cost in terms of public compliance, in various contexts. Does the readability of COVID-19 regulations impact their effectiveness? We study the matter in Italy, a country severely affected by the first wave of COVID-19, and one that has seen many local regulations that have tried to halt the virus. Our empirical evidence, obtained from a corpus built on the basis of all 640 regional COVID-19 regulations that have been published, was collected from the Italian Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces between 21 February and 14 June 2020. Our results, obtained through F-GLS estimations with fixed, hybrid, and random effects, suggest that the readability of the regulations affected the spread of the pandemic, and that an improvement in readability would lead to more efficient outcomes.","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136296036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating Uncertainty: Multinationals’ Investment Strategies after the Pandemic Shock","authors":"Chiara Bellucci, Armando Rungi","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00244-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00244-4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Recent debates suggest that the global economy may enter a deglobalization phase accelerated after COVID-19 and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. This study investigates the investment decisions by multinational enterprises (MNEs) in 2019–2022. We build on a unique data set of about 2 million parent-affiliate linkages to show that there has been a general reorganization of MNEs’ investment strategies since: (i) a relevant share of divestments ( $$33%$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml=\"http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML\"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>33</mml:mn> <mml:mo>%</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) has not been compensated by new investment decisions ( $$14%$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml=\"http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML\"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>14</mml:mn> <mml:mo>%</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ); (ii) domestic subsidiaries are more likely to be established and less likely to be divested; (iii) the average distance of a subsidiary from a parent company has increased; (iv) the number of countries in which the average MNE operates is higher than before. Therefore, after a basic empirical strategy for foreign direct investments and gravity controls, we first confirm a higher revealed preference for domestic investment by MNEs, among others, induced by higher exposure to COVID-19. When we delve deeper into divestment choices at the firm level, we find evidence of reshoring, i.e., when a divestment abroad by a parent company in a specific industry is positively associated with a domestic investment in the same industry.","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":"694 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134903565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Randolph Luca Bruno, Maria Cipollina, Silvia Dal Bianco
{"title":"The Ripple Effect of Sanctions: Exploring the Impact on Global Value Chains Using a Gravity Model","authors":"Randolph Luca Bruno, Maria Cipollina, Silvia Dal Bianco","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00242-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00242-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135768435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Making of Public Works in Italy: Institutional Features and Regional Characteristics","authors":"A. Baltrunaite, T. Orlando, G. Rovigatti","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00241-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00241-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136060682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Connecting Eurasian Supply Chains the Impact of Covid-19 and the Russia–Ukraine War on the EU-China Rail Landbridge","authors":"Richard Pomfret","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00239-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00239-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42396480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bernard M. Hoekman, P. Mavroidis, Douglas R. Nelson
{"title":"Noneconomic Objectives, Global Value Chains and International Cooperation","authors":"Bernard M. Hoekman, P. Mavroidis, Douglas R. Nelson","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00240-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00240-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48445478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Baltrunaite, S. Formai, A. Linarello, S. Mocetti
{"title":"Ownership, Governance, Management and Firm Performance: Evidence from Italian Firms","authors":"A. Baltrunaite, S. Formai, A. Linarello, S. Mocetti","doi":"10.1007/s40797-023-00237-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-023-00237-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43048,"journal":{"name":"Italian Economic Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46488587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}