This book reveals the key trends in the modern Russian trade policy to provide a deeper understanding of the main challenges and barriers, possible paths and opportunities in its development.
 

With the growing concern of the international community about the negative spillover effects of SOEs on trade, reaching a consensus among different stakeholders has become increasingly urgent. This paper argues that strengthening a redefined competition policy is a feasible alternative, or at least a complementary option to the existing trade framework.

Namibia is an open economy where international trade accounts for a greater proportion of gross domestic product (GDP). Openness of the Namibian economy for the period 2010 to 2018 has been on average 111% of GDP. The high level of openness of the economy raised an important question on the relationship between export and economic growth in Namibia. Previous studies investigated the linear relationship between these two variables. The investigation was also done at an aggregate level.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have shone a spotlight on the importance of adaption to climate change. However, progress in achieving SDG 12 which calls for, “responsible consumption and production” has been stalled by the unavailability of indicators that adequately capture and motivate increased responsible consumption. To fill this gap, this article presents an alternative indicator that makes use of cultivar characteristics and uses South African fresh peach and nectarine exports as a focus area.

This paper aims to investigate Thailand’s export potentials in the ASEAN+6 countries, due to a “full liberalization and accessibility scenario” within the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The methodology used is that of “filtering” statistical country data on macro-economic performance and imports following the Decision Support Model (DSM). The macro-economic data used are from the World Bank and the countries’ imports data are from the 2017 CEPII BACI data set. The export potentials thus identified are the base line in the further analysis.

The corona virus shocked everyone, from private institutions to governments. It presented a dual crisis which had not been experienced before, a health crisis and an economic one. The effects of the former would likely be signicficant in the short term while the effects of the latter are likely to be felt in the long term. The country and regional idiosyncrasies implies that some regions will experience a much greater shock than others. Whilst COVID19 is a global pandemic, this article discusses the challenges and opportunities that this crisis presents for Africa.

This paper was presented jointly by Wilma Viviers and Leila Baghdadi.