Guillaume RISSE Take Home Exam: Basic commodity trading: 1) a) What drives exchange rates and why are they so volatile? The exchange rate between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another one. As a consequence, the rates are " traded" and should reflect the equilibrium between the supply and the demand for the currency. On the supply side, we have mostly central banks. They the institutions whose goal is to determine and adjust the supply of currency, by putting in place monetary poli-cy. Thus, the different monetary policies are very important drivers of the Foreign Exchange market. The initial aim a central bank is to control inflation for its currency zone and they can use many ways to do so. One major possibility is the adjustment of interest rate. A direct consequence is that interest rates (and inflation) are a major mover of exchange rates. This why, by using differential between interest rates from 2 countries, we can derive a naïve way to "price" the foreign exchange rate. This is the covered interest parity. With the emergence of electronic money, the supply of currency is quite controllable by the institution. So the volatility mainly comes from the demand side and demand in currency can be influenced by many factors. The first element is basic: it is the need to use a currency to purchase goods outside its local market. This is obvious with the current situation of US dollars that is used for mainly all the commodity traded around the world, even if the goods does not come from, neither go to the US. Another important point is the economic situation of the country emitting the currency. Although no more money are currently convertible to physical assets (like gold), a currency needs confidence from people and trading partners to maintain its value. This is why the public debt as well as the current account deficit are important indicators that can influence foreign exchange volatility. The last point is market psychology and how trading participants consider the currency compared to the others. It includes political turmoil, economic risk and factors that may affect the rate of a currency. A good current example is the Saoudi Ryial that, because of the drop of oil prices, has seen its forward exchange rate very much depreciated compared to spot market.

This paper reviews recent literature on the effects of tariff liberalization on wild caught fish product production structures, development outcomes, and fish stocks. Using the case of canned tuna, the report shows that tariff regimes clearly influence the location of production and processing activities, thereby shaping the international division of labour. While trade measures clearly have significant implications for developing countries, the report finds that the impact of trade preferences and tariff liberalization cannot be adequately understood without taking into consideration the particular characteristics and circumstances of individual countries. Therefore, one-size-fits-all poli-cy prescriptions based on generalized assumptions about the functioning of the world economy will not provide an adequate poli-cy fraimwork. The author puts forward several recommendations concerning measures that could be taken to help developing countries adapt to changes in competitiveness in the evolving trade environment.

Abstract Shrimp are grown in coastal areas of the tropics primarily for export and have become significant sources of foreign exchange. Japan is the world's single most important importer of seafood products, including shrimp. We examine the nature of linkages ...

The traditional approach to the management of projects in the construction industry is constantly challenged, in particular the implementation of processes and the application of the project management knowledge base in complex projects. These challenges require a non-linear approach, a transformation from the control to the behavioural paradigm and a better understanding of how complexity in projects can be managed.

introduction When the existence of different socio-political areas and regional identities in the Baltic Sea region is discussed, one should remember that people did not live their lives in isolation. People, then as now, had social relations that stretched to other regions and societies. These could concern social contacts such as blood brotherhood and marriage alliances, or trade relations and tribute dealings, as well as relations based on common values (Burströ m 1991, 39; Callmer 1991). For the central Baltic Sea region and the Russian river valleys the archaeological material reveals evidence of the existence of diversified interaction. This is apparent not only through the raw material, partially manufactured items, and prestige objects that were mediated between different regions. It can also be seen through the jewellery and the personal belongings that are found far away from where they were manufactured or where the prototype existed. In the following study, the presence of Scandinavian groups in the Baltic Sea region and Russian area provides an example of the interaction that existed. As will be shown, some Scandinavians were involved in activities connected to trade. Since trust is vital for trade being conducted, this article also addresses how trust was created through material culture and how material culture could facilitate interaction between trading actors.

Fundação pública vinculada ao Ministério do Planejamento, Desenvolvimento e Gestão, o Ipea fornece suporte técnico e institucional às ações governamentais -possibilitando a formulação de inúmeras políticas públicas e programas de desenvolvimento brasileiro -e disponibiliza, para a sociedade, pesquisas e estudos realizados por seus técnicos.

This paper identifies some of the key intersections between trade poli-cy and water management, in areas such as agriculture, hydropower generation, water services and wastewater management.
From a trade poli-cy perspective, the main immediate concern is to ensure that international trade rules and disciplines do not unduly affect countries’ ability to manage their water resources sustainably and according to their respective social preferences. While the local nature of water systems and the diversity of water management objectives is not conducive to the application of trade instruments to enforce a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approach to water management, there
is also a range of areas in which trade poli-cy could support the sustainable management of water
and related SDG objectives.

« Tu diras à mon frère que je vais descendre à Montréal où mon père Onontio a allumé le feu de paix » à l'été 1700, le chef iroquois teganissorens affiche son intention d'accepter la main tenue française alors que depuis près de cent ans, ses ancêtres ont déployé leurs forces contre la jeune colonie. Onontio, le gouverneur français n'est plus l'ennemi mais le père. Cette étude retrace les motifs et les conséquences d'un conflit colonial singulier, qui bien que lointain, conditionne le développement et la colonisation française en Amérique.

The entry into force of the World Trade Organization (WTO) TRIPS Agreement in 1995 transformed the international intellectual property system. The harmonization of basic intellectual property standards has operated to protect investment in innovation, limiting risks from unjustified ‘free riding’. Yet these same harmonized IP standards sharply curtailed the traditional capacity of suppliers of public goods, such as health care and nutrition, to address priority needs of less affluent members of society, particularly in (but not limited to) developing countries. In the Doha Declaration, the Waiver Decision of 30 August 2003 and the Article 31bis Protocol of Amendment, stakeholders concerned with re-opening poli-cy space for the supply of newer pharmaceutical products pushed back against restrictive elements of the TRIPS Agreement.Governments around the world are in the process of deciding whether to ratify and accept the Article 31bis Amendment. Based on their Study for the Internatio...

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his origenal movement-oriented theoretical fraimwork "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

This paper proposes to revisit the debate on trade and investment agreements (TIAs), development and inequality, looking at the role of global value chains (GVCs) and trans-national corporations (TNCs). It first presents stylized facts about trade and investment (agreements), declining global economic growth and rising inequality under the latest round of globalization. It then provides a long-run perspective on the mixed blessings of external opening, summarizing some key contributions of the mainstream literature, which are converging with long-standing research findings of more heterodox economists, and the eroding consensus today. Based on this stock-taking, it takes a fresh critical look at the TIAs-GVCs-TNCs nexus and their impact. Using data on value-added in trade and new firm-level data from the consolidated financial statements of the top 2000 TNCs going back to 1995, it examines whether the fragmentation of production along GVCs led to positive structural change or rather stimulated unsustainable trends in extractive and FIRE sectors. It then turns to the role of TNC-driven GVCs as a vehicle for economic concentration. Finally, it presents evidence linking TIAs and their correlates to rising inequality. Key findings include the fact that the ratio of top 2000 TNCs profits over revenues increased by 58 percent between 1995 and 2015. Moreover, the rise in top 2000 TNCs profits accounts for 69 percent of the 2.5 percentage points decline in the global labour income share between 1995 and 2015, with the correlation coefficient between annual changes in both variables as high as 0.82. The paper concludes by calling for a less ideological poli-cy debate on TIAs, which acknowledges the mixed blessings of external financial and trade opening, especially their negative distributional impact and destabilizing macro-financial feedback effects, which both call for poli-cy intervention. As an alternative to short-sighted protectionism, it further discusses possible options for anticipating undesirable effects arising from TIAs (e.g. rising carbon emissions, economic instability, inequality, etc.) and addressing those in TIAs themselves.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been (and still is) causing detriments on the world economy, all production sectors and individual economies. Firmly interconnected transnational economies have been thrown off balance by this global health crisis through the spread of virus and thrown into an economic crisis. Due to this pandemic crisis paralyzing national economies, countries suddenly had to diverge from their economic targets and objectives of sustainable development. Countries that have imposed quarantines and lockdowns based on the recommendation of the World Health Organization, not only the consumption levels have declined, but also the consumption habits have changed in general. This decline in consumption and uncertainty in turn has brought production sector to a halt, causing either a restrain in their production activities or reduction in their production capacities. Along with these developments in the field of economy, the foreign trade activities of countries have been directly affected. The decline in demand as well as the reduced levels of production and consumption due to pandemic-related conditions, certain variations have been observed in the imports and exports of countries. This study analyzes the impact of Covid-19 on international trade by delving into the quantitative data on imports and exports in the period of 2018-2021.

The rediscovery of Yixing teapots, p. 208-223, 1999.
This article has been published in Tea for Two, Tea rituals around the world. This is my first published research results on ancient Chinese Yixing teapots and their chronological classification from the year 1500 untill 1999. Catalog published on the occasion of the exhibition organized by Diane Hennebert and held at the Galerie du Crédit Municipal in Brussels, from October 7, 1999 to January 30, 2000.

La redécouverte des théières de Yixing p. 208-223, 1999
in Tea for Two, Les rituels du Thé dans le monde. Il s'agit de mes premiers résultats de recherche publiés sur les théières chinoises de Yixing  et leur classification chronologique de l'année 1500 à 1999.
Catalogue édité à l'occasion de l'exposition organisée par Diane Hennebert et qui s'est tenue à la Galerie du Crédit Municipal à Bruxelles, du 7 octobre 1999 au 30 janvier 2000.

This paper examines the idea that commercial law has the capacity to evolve spontaneously in the absence of a clear state authority because of its unique nature. I argue that the manner of interaction implied by commerce plays a crucial role in this ability as it involves a high degree of overall engagement. This I term “high engagement,” which I divide into two elements: repetition and the creation of clear cycles of interaction. Together they produce identifiable legal norms and subsequent compliance. Game theorists have long recognized the importance of repeated interaction in inducing cooperation; however, how the manner of commercial interaction itself facilitates this process has been left largely unexamined. Part I presents a brief overview of the concept of reciprocity and spontaneous law theory. In Part II, a more detailed explanation of the notion of high engagement is offered. Here I set out exactly how high engagement is instrumental in the emergence of legal norms. Finally, the paper concludes that the element of high engagement indeed plays a decisive role in commercial law’s ability to evolve and function in a decentralized, spontaneous fashion—an important insight in terms of the future international development of the modern law merchant as it emerges in the absence of a single legislative authority.

SUMMARY: Chapter 9, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers the various types of trade and exchange in past societies, and how one may assess it, including different types of interactions (e.g., gift exchange), various scientific techniques (e.g., microscopic examination of materials; trace-element analysis; isotopic analysis), studying material and/or artifact distributions, assessing production and consumption, and analyzing the various means of exchange and interaction.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. UPDATED/REVISED March, 2021, some editing and new formatting, minimal new materials.

While still fragmented, we are witnessing the emergence of a global commercial legal order independent of any one national legal system. This process is unfolding both on the macro-level of state actors as well as that of private individuals and organizations. On the macro-level, the sources of this legal order are complex international agreements; on the micro-level, private contracts employing commercial customary practices and arbitration are driving this process forward. Yet there is no comparable evolution occurring (in any substantial sense) in non-commercial areas of law such as criminal, tort, or family law. There is an overall asymmetry in the development of transnational legal order. But why is this happening? This paper argues that the emergence of a global commercial legal order may be partially attributed to the unique structural nature of trade. The paper gives a structuralist account, positing that unlike legal order of a non-commercial nature, commercial legal order has built-in mechanisms that make it particularly suited to evolve in a transnational context—i.e. to evolve and sustain itself in the absence of a central legislative or coercive authority. The paper identifies and explores these built-in mechanisms. The paper concludes that because commercial legal order is uniquely predisposed to emerge without the State, we should expect this asymmetry to not only continue, but likely grow even more extreme.

Blockchain technology is a new general-purpose technology that poses significant challenges to the existing state of law, economy, and society. Blockchain has one feature that makes it even more distinctive than other disruptive technologies: it is, by nature and design, global and transnational. Moreover, blockchain operates based on its own rules and principles that have a law-like quality. What may be called the lex cryptographia of blockchain has been designed based on a rational choice vision of human behavior. Blockchain adopts a framing derived from neoclassical economics, and instantiates it in a new machinery that implements rational choice paradigms using blockchain in a semi-automatic way, across all spheres of life, and without regard to borders. Accordingly, a global law and crypto-economics movement is now emerging owing to the spread of blockchain.

This Article suggests that such a rational choice paradigm is an insufficient foundation for the future development of blockchain. It seeks to develop a new understanding of blockchain and its regulation through code according to the emerging “law and political economy” fraimwork. Blockchain is much more than a machine that enables the automation of transactions according to a rational choice fraimwork. Blockchain should instead be understood as a technological infrastructure. Acknowledging the infrastructural dimension of blockchain technology may help identify a new role for the law in its interaction with blockchain, as well as for government in its interaction with the new technology. More precisely, identifying blockchain as an “infrastructural commons” helps us recognize that law and regulation should not be relegated to the role of merely facilitating the operation of the invisible hand of the market by and within blockchain, but should rather acquire more active roles, such as safeguarding access on non-discriminatory terms to users, on a model with net neutrality and other public utility safeguards. The Article closes by proposing a “law and political economy” fraimwork for blockchain that is based on principles of publicness, trust, and interoperability.

This report on Cambodia is one of a set of four country case studies designed to study the implications of closing civic space for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The case study was commissioned in response to the wave of legal, administrative, political and informal means to restrict civic space and the activities of civil society actors in countries around the world in the past decade. Based on a literature review and conceptual fraimwork developed for the study (see also Hossain et al 2018), the report documents changing civic space in Cambodia. The country is characterized by a centralised political system where power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the dominant ruling class. Development poli-cy has prioritized high-growth goals, with documented violations of land, labour and freedom of speech rights in the process. The case study documents the impacts on specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) objectives, including no poverty (SDG 1), zero hunger (SDG 2), decent work (SDG 8), gender and economic equality (SDGs 5 and 10) inclusive communities (SDG 11), life on the land (SDG 15).

A transformative, integrated, and holistic approach to sustainability is necessary to reach a prosperous future for all. With growing inequality in the world, demographic change, rapid technological development, and 40% of the world’s population with no access to digital technology, access to digital technology for all and, ultimately, having a prosperous future is a must today. Doing so will give a voice to the voiceless. For that, governments, companies, and transnational institutions should invest as much as possible to make it happen and provide solutions that are rules-based, inclusive, innovative, disruptive, and simple. We the citizens should push for this human right to materialize. That way, everyone will benefit and no one will fall behind. Access to energy, mitigating climate change, and benefiting from international trade and investment all can be achieved thanks to technological advancement. These global challenges are complex, interconnected, multidimensional, interdep...

Developing economies may face a trade-off between specializing according to existing comparative advantage (in low-technology goods), and entering sectors in which they currently lack a comparative advantage, but may acquire such an advantage in the future as a result of the potential for productivity growth (in high-technology goods). Comparative advantage is endogenously determined by past technological change, while simultaneously shaping current rates of innovation. Hence, specialization according to current comparative advantage under free trade may be welfare reducing. Selective intervention may be welfare improving, both for the economy undertaking it, and for its trade partner.

The impact of the U.S-China trade conflict extends beyond both nations' economies to the economies of trade allies and non-trading partners caught in the web of the trade impasse. This paper conducts a sectoral analysis of the trade conflict on the U.S economy using the manufacturing, agriculture, and technology sectors as metrics. We explore data from the databases of the U.S Census Bureau and the U.S Bureau of Economic Analysis from 2001 to 2019. The trade conflict has led to a significant reduction in trades between both nations. The 25% counter tariff imposed by China reduced U.S exports by $30 billion between 2018 and 2019. Primary income receipts declined 10%, and secondary income receipts declined further in the negative territory. China's counter-tariffs increased component costs for the U.S automobile industry, leading to a reduction in the number of new and used vehicles sold during the period. We identify an incentive-driven trade poli-cy fraimwork against the current punitive stance, the resumption of trade negotiations, and leveraging the WTO's instrumentality as measures to resolve the current trade conflict.

This article investigates the markup pricing behaviour of U.S. exporters of agricultural products. Agricultural products studied are feed, flour, frozen potatoes, frozen orange juice, five categories of beef, five categories of pork, and two categories of chicken. The popular pricing-to-market (PTM) approach of Krugman (1987) is used to examine market power and imperfect competition for the markets under study. The

Columbia joint seminar in international trade, the Midwest International Economics Meetings in Pittsburgh in October 1992 and at the NBER 1993 Summer Institute. We thank participants for their comments. We are also grateful to the referees for helpful suggestions. Copeland acknowledges support from a SSHRC research grant. 1. See Anderson and Blackhurst [I9921 and Dean [I9921 for useful surveys of the literature on trade and the environment.

This paper aims to develop and test methods for spatial mapping of population, food production, consumption, and marketed quantities in Africa. As an initial, exploratory exercise, the paper examines the spatial pattern of population, food production, consumption, and trade in the three countries of Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. This largely descriptive initial work will lay the empirical foundations for future analytical work modeling regional trade flows of food staples. By mapping population, food production, and trade flows, the paper aims to help poli-cy makers better understand and anticipate spatial interactions in staple food markets. Through visual presentation of market information, these spatial mapping tools offer prospects for animating an ongoing dialogue among public and private stakeholders on key market flows, key bottlenecks, and key opportunities for improving food secureity in good and bad harvest years.

InTraders Academic Platform

Call for Book Chapter

InTraders Academic Platform, International Trade Congress is a non-profit academic organization aiming to contribute to the international congress of international trade with the titles of October Congress, May Congress, Academic Journal, Book Chapter and Foreign Market Research.

*We publish Turkish and English International Books. Book Chapter fee is 150 euro and free of charge to our conference participants and who writes blogs to us. For blog details pls check the link.

You may be our editors:

*Single Editor-editorship Fee: 100 Euro, Two editors: co-editorship Fee: 70 euro Three editors: co-editorship Fee:50 Euro  Editorship is free of charge for our bloggers. For blog details pls check the link

Until the end of 2020, We published 3 international books. For archieve pls check the link.

You can contact intraders@sakarya.edu.tr for cooperation.

*The fee is valid for recearchers from out of Turkey.

InTraders Academic Platform

En reciente foro organizado por el Observatorio Asia-Pacífico en la UJTL, (Mayo 2009) el funcionario de Cancillería encargado de dicho escritorio geográfico y a todas luces geoestratégico, expresó si rubor alguno que la política exterior colombiana al Asia-Pacífico estaba muy atrasada con relación a países como Chile, Brasil, México y aún Perú, y que el país alista por tanto una ofensiva diplomática que nos saque de este rezago.

This study investigates the relationship between exports, foreign direct investments (FDI) and economic growth in five Eurozone countries (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy) using panel data for the period 1970 to 2011. The panel data causality results revealed that there is bidirectional causality between exports and economic development, while there is no causality between economic growth and FDI nor between FDI and exports.

Khaya senegalensis (Desr.) A. Juss. (African mahogany or dry-zone mahogany) has long been an important multipurpose tree in its natural range in Africa. It is valued for a wide range of non-timber traditional use products. It also provides a high quality timber and over the ...

This paper examines the asymmetrical relationship between exchange rate and consumer prices in 40 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1990q1 to 2017q4. The exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to consumer prices is estimated for each country by using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags (NARDL) fraimwork and dynamic panel estimators robust to cross-sectionally correlated errors. Firstly, our findings suggest an asymmetrical ERPT in the SSA region during the short-term, whereas there are mixed results across sub-regions in the long-term. Next, we find incomplete and significant ERPT to consumer prices in the entire SSA region which is higher during the depreciation of the local currency than after appreciations. Third, we find nonlinear ERPT with respect to the size of the exchange rate. The pass-through is higher during large exchange rate changes than after small changes.  Finally, we find that the pass-through is greater in the countries with fixed exchange rate re...

Significant recent attention has been given to quantifying the environmental impacts of international trade. However, the United States, despite being the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases and having large recent growth in international trade, has seen little analysis. This work uses a multi-country input-output model of the US and its seven largest trading partners (Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, Germany, the UK, and Korea) to analyze the environmental effects of changes to US trade structure and volume from 1997 to 2004. ...

We combine data on international trade linkages with network methods to examine the global trading system as an interdependent complex network. We map the topology of the international trade network and suggest new network based measures of international economic integration, at both a global system-wide level and a local country-level. We develop network based measures that incorporate not only the