Trade Supply Chain Research Articles

Changing the optics on palm oil: Fair Trade smallholder supply chains from the palm's ancestral home in West Africa

Traidcraft Exchange and its sister business Traidcraft Plc have been developing Fair Trade supply chains for over three decades. As core 'Fairtrade'-certified commodities such as coffee, cocoa, tea and bananas have become mainstream in the UK market since the late 1990s, Traidcraft has focused energies on bringing new innovative supply chains and new small-producer organisations into the wider Fair Trade system. The case study presented here is of palm oil sourced from smallholder farmers in Ghana's Eastern region: a commodity normally synonymous with environmental degradation and an area left behind by the economic development of Greater Accra. The case study seeks to demonstrate how Traidcraft's explicit focus on working with small producers and new innovative product ranges provides a counter-balance to consolidation of certified 'Fairtrade' around core commodities. At the same time, the case study highlights some of the challenges of bringing new products to market in the UK's current retail environment.

Assessing Synergies, Linkages and the Role of Hainan Special Economic Zone in Development of Natural Rubber Ecosystem

China has successfully created value and wealth, by integrating its industrial and technological development with Global Value Chains through deployment of economic zones. This paper looks at Hainan Special Economic Zone (‘HSEZ’), which was established as the largest special economic zone in China and has grown into second largest contributor of Natural Rubber (‘NR’) production in China. HSEZ has played a key role in design and development of socio-economic policies by acting as a ‘greenhouse’ to test these policies, and in process delivering extraordinary results. The application of triple helix structure to design policies, utilize institutions and implement initiatives by the HSEZ has allowed it to develop some key clusters within the zone where NR ecosystem is regarded as a great accomplishment. This paper identifies the output variables for socio-economic impact rendered by the HSEZ, and output variables of the local NR ecosystem. It then correlates and regresses them to gain insight on the synergies and linkages between the HSEZ’s vibrant environment and the local NR ecosystem. It also looks into new technologies and innovations that are being diffused from universities and research centers with the help of the private sector, under liberal but protective regulations instituted by the government agencies, and seamlessly flowing into the local NR ecosystem. These innovations are helping to address challenges and transforming this traditional but strategic agricultural industry in China, thereby opening venues for its growth and sustainability. This study builds up on primary data collected from visit to the province, discussions with stakeholders in Hainan and analysis of secondary data from various public sources. The results show that HSEZ, has successfully created a ‘collaborative and conducive environment’ that binds key ingredients of the natural rubber ecosystem together. On one hand, NR based entrepreneurial ecosystem has formed significant linkages within the HSEZ thereby influencing its gross regional product, government revenue, employment, investments, trade and innovation. On the other hand, NR based entrepreneurial ecosystem retains its uniqueness, and strengthens its contribution to the global and regional trade supply chains. Keywords: Trade & Environment, Government Policy, Agriculture, Technological Change JEL: F18, L78, O13, O33

АНАЛИЗ ВЛИЯНИЯ ПАНДЕМИИ НА ПРЕДПРИЯТИЯ КИТАЯ

The article reveals the impact of the new coronavirus pandemic on Chinese enterprises and its individual industries. The purpose of the study is to develop recommendations for the economic development of Chinese enterprises in the fight against the pandemic. It is proved that the state needs to pay special attention to reducing taxes and the burden, and take supporting reform measures to reduce the non-tax burden for enterprises. Along with the efforts of industrialization and urbanization to further promote quality development, it is necessary to fully stimulate the potential of the Chinese economy. In line with the above-mentioned incentive measures, combined with the work done to overcome the epidemic as soon as possible. For manufacturing enterprises, the intuitive idea of a moderate expansion of macro-monetary policy is that investment and financing conditions are softened, and loans will become more affordable. Companies that were suspended during the epidemic should prepare in advance to meet the expectations of a better market economy and launch production and operational activities in advance in order to restore their competitiveness. When developing supportive policies, local authorities should also think about how to take full initiative and creatively implement Central policies under the leadership of the Central government. Local governments should take into account their own financial resources and regional conditions, use key points and opportunities, and take targeted actions. Implementation should properly regulate relations between the state and enterprises and strive to improve the level of state management of the social sphere. Mechanisms such as public-private partnerships should be actively implemented to achieve the mission's goals. In the course of the research, we used methods for analyzing companies ' activities and synthesizing data. The results of the work include the following suggested recommendations: 1. development of transformation in foreign trade enterprises aimed at expanding the production and supply of materials for epidemic prevention; 2. implementation of targeted support to expand demand in the domestic market; 3. resumption of production throughout the production chain and improvement of the foreign trade supply chain; 4.development of digital trade.

Leaving the fish bowl: the ornamental trade as a global vector for freshwater fish invasions

Despite its social and economic benefits, the trade in ornamental species (henceforth, ‘ornamental trade’) has become a major source of non-native fish introductions into freshwater ecosystems. However, the ornamental trade as a vector for introductions of non-native freshwater fishes is not well defined. We developed a framework incorporating elements of the biological invasion process and a typical ornamental fish trade supply chain to fill this gap. Records of non-native ornamental fishes introduced to freshwater environments of Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada (British Columbia), China (Guangdong), the Philippines, Poland, Singapore, the United Kingdom (England), and the United States of America (Florida) were reviewed to explore the pervasiveness of these introduced fishes in the wild. These regional case studies confirmed the prominence of the ornamental trade as a global vector for freshwater fish introductions beyond their natural range. Additionally, we examined freshwater fishes associated with the ornamental trade to identify ‘risky’ species that could establish in recipient regions based on climate match. All regions assessed were at risk of new fish introductions via the ornamental trade, with the number of ‘risky’ species ranging from seven to 256. Further, there appears to be taxonomic bias in the freshwater ornamental fish trade, with 74% of the species belonging to just 10 families (of 67). Current prevention and management approaches and associated polices, regulations and legislation on aquatic non-native species within assessed regions fit five general categories: import controls, risk assessment, whitelist, blacklist, and release ban. However, these prevention/management efforts may not be sufficient to reduce the invasion risk associated with the ornamental fish trade. Recommendations including species- and vector-based risk assessments, better recording of species import consignments, increased public education and industry engagement, and early detection and rapid response are discussed in this review.

The Belt and Road Initiative’s effect on supply-chain trade: evidence from structural gravity equations

This article considers the effect of China’s Belt and Road Initiative on supply-chain trade for 64 economies in the period 2002–2011. We employ a structural gravity equation to estimate the impact of trade-cost reducing measures—notably infrastructural improvements and the creation of free trade agreements—on supply-chain trade and welfare in general equilibrium. We find that infrastructural investments will yield asymmetric benefits to China, Russia and Southeast Asian countries stemming from greater European market access. Our results also suggest that China’s alternatives to foster (inter)regional economic growth through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership offer much less attractive economic prospects.

A Survey on Using Blockchain in Trade Supply Chain Solutions

Blockchain has emerged as a promising technology to ensure trust between parties. By using this technology, we can establish a secure communication paradigm, where data integrity and immutability can be guaranteed. These inherited features underline blockchain as a suitable technology to optimise the adopted processing model in several domains, such as health, trade supply chain and food safety. In this paper, we present a detailed overview of the use of blockchain technology in (international) trade supply chains. Furthermore, the discussed proposals have been classified based on the target application scenarios. Our goal is to clarify the benefits of applying this technology to the trading domain and highlight the challenges that are associated with applying this technology to optimise the trading domain. Accordingly, we underline several issues that occur during the designing of the blockchain solution to optimise the (international) trade supply chain.

Capital investments in the context of sustainable development of railways

Ukraine, due to its geographical position and developed transport infrastructure, has significant potential as a transit country, primarily in the supply chain of trade between Asia and Europe. According to the estimates of the British Institute for Transport Rendell Ukraine, the transit coefficient of Ukraine is 3,75 (with a maximum of 5); This is the best indicator among the countries of Europe (for comparison, in Poland, which occupies the second place, this indicator is 2,92).Nowadays, Ukraine uses its transit potential extremely insufficiently and inefficiently; over the past 10 years, the volume of transit traffic through the territory of Ukraine has declined by more than 2,5 times, primarily due to the fall in transit traffic by rail. One of the reasons for this situation is, of course, the general political and economic situation in the country. However, there are a number of other negative factors that prevent Ukraine from fully and effectively using its transit potential. These problems lie both in the purely technical plane (deterioration of transport infrastructure and rolling stock, lack of capacity of the main transport routes, underdevelopment of logistics terminals in the country and at land borders, difference in width with the European railway system) and the legislato-thick (high level of port dues, bureaucratization and regulation of customs procedures, lack of flexible tariff policy for carriers, etc.).

A Study on the Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on Trade Dependence and Supply Chain Integration

A Study on the Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on Trade Dependence and Supply Chain Integration

WTO REGULATION OF TRANSNATIONAL PRIVATE AUTHORITY IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

AbstractFollowing the proliferation of private standards in the global supply chain trade, it has become clear that these can have adverse effects on international commerce and world welfare in the same way that government-imposed mandatory regulations do. However, the scope of the obligation of WTO Members in relation to the regulation of private standards remains vague and open to divergent interpretations under WTO law. This article starts from the premise that the debate should move beyond the search for a reasonable interpretation of relevant WTO disciplines and instead begin to consider normative questions concerning the legitimacy and accountability of transnational private regulation in global governance and the potential role of the WTO in regulating such private authority. The article explores what justifies the role of the WTO, a multilateral intergovernmental organization, in regulating transnational private standards and how a regulatory mechanism might be designed and implemented in practice.

Trade-Driven Sectoral Upgrading and the Global Imbalances

This paper analyzes how trade integration may affect international financial flows in a world with heterogeneous financial development. In the presence of financial frictions and sector-specific minimum investment requirements, the static gains from trade trigger the cross-sector investment reallocation on the extensive margin, which may allow the more financially developed country (North) to offshore low-return production activities and upgrade to high-return activities. This way, trade-driven sectoral upgrading in North becomes a mechanism through which the substantial decline in trade and communication costs and the resulting boom in supply-chain trade may contribute to the global imbalances in the recent decades.

Information flow in the Sino-Brazilian beef trade

Considering the opportunities offered by the Chinese beef market and the fragilities in the Sino-Brazilian beef trade supply chain, this study aims to identify the main sources and channels used by Brazilian beef packers to obtain information on the Chinese market. The results reveal that the Brazilian beef packers and institutions within the export sector have little knowledge regarding the Chinese market. Neither the size nor the export experience of the beef packing firms and the foreign direct investment seem to significantly influence the quality of the knowledge they hold on the Chinese beef market. The sector has neither an integrated database containing the essential information on the Chinese market nor a unified traceability system in place that could facilitate the information flow among the agents within the beef supply chain. Consequently, firms need to dedicate substantial management resources (time, financial and human) to collect information from various sources.

The Network Origins of the Gains from Trade

This paper argues that the determinants of the welfare gains from trade have fundamentally changed with the emergence of a global production network. Towards this end, we study a Ricardian trade model featuring trade in intermediate inputs, and develop a novel comparative statics approach to decompose the total welfare effect of an arbitrary trade cost shock into several meaningful, easily quantifiable, channels. This decomposition uncovers a unique feature of supply chain trade: the gains from trade are not so much determined by a country's access to the technologies and markets of its direct trade partners, but rather by a country's network exposure to countries further up- or downstream in the global production network. We develop a set of simple statistics to measure each country's network exposure, show how it predicts the gains from trade, and identify each country's key trade intermediaries, i.e., countries that primarily determine its network exposure.

Intangibles Trade and MNEs: Supply-Chain Trade in R&D Services and Innovative Subsidiaries

This paper contributes to the literature on vertical specialization in R&D (or ‘R&D fragmentation’) and trade in intermediate services by examining the role of multinational enterprises (MNE) activities associated with bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI). Prior work in production networks (or global value chains [GVCs]) and R&D fragmentation suggests a complementarity relationship between FDI in R&D and technological knowledge flows. The paper examines this proposition empirically for R&D services trade by extending the gravity framework of supply-chain trade for intermediate services with bilateral MNE operations as economic mass variables. The results are partially consistent with the hypothesized complementarity. The econometric strategy accounts for zero trade observations. The latter addresses possible selection and consistency issues of traditional gravity trade specifications, and allows exploring extensive vs. intensive margin of trade. Understanding the role of MNEs in these transactions may be useful for policies aimed at increasing participation and upgrading in MNE-driven GVCs.

Building an Effective Criminal Justice Response to Wildlife Trafficking: Experiences from the ASEAN Region

South East Asia and more specifically the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region plays a crucial role in the supply chain of the illegal wildlife trade as a transit, destination and also origin of endangered species. The capacity of ASEAN members to respond to wildlife crimes as a cohesive region rather than a conglomeration of nations is hampered by marked differences in the way in which each country frames the problem, designs laws and enforces them. Corruption undermines the implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in every step of the wildlife trade supply chain. The regional response from criminal justice systems so far remains weak and the use of international tools like the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime is critical for an improvement of the status quo. This article examines the existing policy frameworks and provides some recommendations to address the most urgent shortcomings, with a focus on improved criminal justice responses in the ASEAN region.

Understanding Port Efficiency: A CPEC Perspective

This paper aims to provide an insight into the efficacious use and development of Pakistani ports located along the ChinaPakistan Economic corridor. The main objective of this paper is to understand how the physical infrastructure, logistics suprastructure and value-added services contribute in the enhancing port efficiency in the wake of CPEC operationalization. A sample of 15 well-experienced respondents from the domains of supply chain management, logistics, trade and public sector were selected. The study concluded that physical infrastructure, logistics suprastructure and logistics services at a port play a vital role in improving port efficiency. The study further pointed out that adequate port structure and value-added services would significantly contribute to port efficiency and facilitate the smooth clearance of CPEC cargo.

A Dea-Logistics Performance Index

Logistics and transport increasingly play a pivotal role in international trade relations. The Logistics Performance Index (LPI) measures the on-the-ground efficiency of trade supply chains or logistics performance. The aim of this paper is to propose a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to compute a synthetic index of overall logistics performance (DEA-LPI) and benchmark the logistics performance of the countries with LPI. Dealing with the six dimensions of LPI, the proposed approach uses DEA as a tool for multiple criteria decision making (MCDM). Furthermore, the paper also analyses the potential differences observed when using different variables, namely income and geographical area. Our findings suggest that the logistics performance depends largely on income and geographical area. High income countries are in the group of best performers, which is highly dominated by the EU.

Supply chain trade and technological transfer in the ASEAN + 3 region

This paper analyses how economic integration and the international division of labour have evolved among the ASEAN+3 countries in the last 20years. The paper proposes an indicator of the level of technological sophistication based on revealed comparative advantages and uses it to investigate the relation between technological advance, factor endowments and supply chain trade. It is shown that supply chain-trade does not facilitate technological transfer. On the contrary: FDI appears to have significant and negative spill-over effects on technological change. Positive spill-overs from FDI materialize only when host countries have sufficiently high levels of education.

The Global Impact of Container Inventory Imbalance and the Factors that Influence Container Inventory Management Strategies

Container shipping celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2016, as an innovation that had a tremendous impact on the global supply chain. This paper focuses on the impact of container inventory imbalance that mounts a substantial pressure on global supply chains. The primary objective of this paper is to explore best market practices and ascertain as to what factors influence these strategies. It also evaluates the impact of container inventory imbalance to the global supply chain. The study refers to interviews with industry experts and questionnaire responses from shipping lines operated in Sri Lanka in addition to the desk research to explain the impact of the container inventory problem in the global scale. If carriers provide the right quantity of containers demanded by exporters at the right location at the right time, the optimum supply chain performance could be guaranteed. The consequences of container fleet imbalances are ultimately borne by exporters, importers, consumers, traders and even — inadvertently — other players in the cargo supply chain of international trade. Therefore, carriers need an effective solution to the global container inventory imbalance problem.

How Women Have Fared with the Rise of the People's Republic of China in Global Supply Chain Trade

Global supply chain (GSC) trade has been a driving force underlying economic transformation, urbanization, and social change in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Female migrants account for a large share of the labor force in the country’s GSC production base. Using province-level panel data, this study employs regression analysis to examine how the country’s rapid integration into the supply chain has affected women’s welfare outcomes captured by occupational status. The analysis shows mixed results. On the one hand, global integration through trade expansion improved the concentration of men and women equally in professional and skilled occupations and in management positions. On the other hand, female employment in manufacturing for GSC trade increased faster than male employment. This trend decreased in turn the male–female sex ratio among those aged 0–4 years. This finding is consistent with other studies on the PRC that confirm the beneficial effect of a relative rise in women’s income in reducing the sex imbalance. Gender-specific policies should support female migrants in moving up the job ladder in GSC trade through higher education and skills training for professional and leadership positions. This should be complemented with incentives for the private sector—the biggest source of employment in the PRC—to promote gender equality by harnessing the advancement in technology and opportunities offered by the rapid growth of GSC trade.

How Women Have Fared With the Rise of the People's Republic of China in Global Supply Chain Trade

How Women Have Fared With the Rise of the People's Republic of China in Global Supply Chain Trade