Oleksandr Shepotylo

International trade, trade policy, and productivity

Reader in Economics, Aston Business School. Centre Director, Centre for Business Prosperity. Former Lead Economist, Foreign Trade Research Center (Trade+), Kyiv School of Economics. PhD in Economics, University of Maryland.

I work on how firms, industries, and countries grow by integrating into global markets — and what happens when that integration goes into reverse. From Brexit and the US–China trade war to Ukraine’s wartime export economy, the questions are the same: who bears the cost, which firms adapt, and — where supply chains run through a handful of chokepoints — what makes some of them more resilient than others when those chokepoints break.

Brexit

What leaving the EU actually did to British trade — measured, not argued.

Trade Wars

When allies coerce, markets fragment, and geopolitics rewrites the trade map.

Other

Development, institutions, and spatial economics — work outside the four main hubs.

Ukraine

Exports, reconstruction, and whether an economy can win a war.

Firms

What trade policy actually does at the level of the firm.

Consultancy & Policy

Trade policy analysis for governments, firms, and institutions.

Recent

From pace-setter to laggard: Brexit and the British car industry

brexit

firms

car-industry

tca

In the years before the referendum, Britain’s car industry grew roughly eight times faster than Germany’s. Uncertainty slowed it, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement broke it away, and the next round of European trade rules may decide whether it has a future at all.

Oct 5, 2026

Is Russia’s economy bigger than Britain’s? Nominal GDP, PPP and the economics of isolation

ukraine

russia-economy

gdp

ppp

Tucker Carlson says Russia’s economy is larger than Britain’s. At PPP it is; at market exchange rates it is about two-thirds the size. Why the gap exists, why isolation widens it, and what the Soviet Union teaches about economies that look big on paper.

Oct 3, 2026

Fifty Percent: How Russia’s Cost-of-Living Crisis Became a Landslide

ukraine

russia-economy

inflation

Russian consumer prices are up 50% since 2022, the worst inflation among major economies, yet the Kremlin just won its biggest parliamentary majority ever. A look at why the bill never reaches the ballot box.

Sep 22, 2026

After SPS: the EU trade barrier that needs fixing next

brexit

firms

Five years of UK-EU trade data show a 53.8% decline in export product varieties and a 16.5% fall in export values — deeply integrated sectors survived Brexit, but the logic of maintaining them is eroding.

Sep 14, 2026

Impact of a TB epidemic on worker and firm productivity: the regional perspective from Ukraine

ukraine

firms

Journal of Population Economics, 2026. With Olena Nizalova.

Show abstract

Using administrative records from Ukrainian regions between 2003–2009, we find that higher tuberculosis prevalence significantly reduced both worker wages and firm total factor productivity, while newly diagnosed cases were associated with higher wages and productivity. Geographic analysis reveals substantial spillover effects across neighbouring regions. A 10% reduction in TB prevalence is estimated to yield GDP gains of roughly 1.05% — substantially exceeding the 0.04% of GDP Ukraine spent on TB control that year, pointing to considerable underinvestment in disease mitigation.

Sep 14, 2026