Oleksandr Shepotylo

Political alliances and trade: Europe in a polarized world

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Bilateral trade flows increasingly track political alignment, not just the standard gravity-model fundamentals of distance, size, and trade agreements. Using a structural gravity framework, we show that political alliances are a statistically significant predictor of trade between European economies and the rest of the world, and that the strength of this relationship has grown as global politics has polarized.

Published in: European Journal of Political Economy, 85(C)

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Transforming East Asia: Regional Integration in a Trade War Era

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

As US–China trade tensions escalated, East Asian economies deepened regional integration with each other rather than retreating into protectionism. We document this shift in trade patterns and ask whether it reflects deliberate diversification away from exposure to the US–China relationship, or simply the mechanical effect of existing regional trade agreements taking fuller effect.

Published in: Open Economies Review, 34(3), 657–672

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Non-tariff measures and productivity of Ukrainian food-processing firms

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Non-tariff measures imposed by trading partners act as a quality filter on Ukrainian food-processing exporters: firms that clear them see productivity gains, while the compliance costs push less productive firms out of export markets entirely. Using firm-level microdata, we separate this selection effect from the direct within-firm productivity effect of meeting stricter standards — evidence directly relevant to Ukraine’s ongoing agrifood market access negotiations with the EU.

Published in: Journal of Agricultural Economics, 73(1), 234–256

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Belt and road: The China dream?

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

We assess whether participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative has delivered the trade gains its member countries were promised, using a structural gravity model to separate the initiative’s effect from underlying trends already under way before countries signed on.

Published in: China Economic Review, 67(C)

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Popular Support For Trade Agreements And Partner Country Characteristics

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Public support for a trade agreement depends not just on its expected economic effects but on characteristics of the partner country — including factors with no direct bearing on trade volumes, such as perceived political alignment and cultural distance. We use survey experiments to separate economic from non-economic drivers of trade-agreement support, with direct implications for how governments should sequence and communicate new trade deals.

Published in: Economic Inquiry, 59(1), 549–566

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