ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of digitalization reshaping the international trade landscape, the deep integration of digital technology with the real economy is transforming the global value chain and has become a crucial pathway for enhancing national competitiveness. This study investigates how digital‐real integration influences China's trade network centrality. Employing a trade network model, we first theoretically analyze how digital‐real integration affects firms' positions within the trade network. Then, based on customs data from 2011 to 2022, we measure China's trade network centrality and empirically test the impact of digital‐real integration. The results indicate that digital‐real integration significantly improves China's trade network centrality, with various robustness tests supporting the reliability of this conclusion. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the effect of digital‐real integration is more pronounced in high contract intensity and technology‐intensive industries. Additionally, mechanism analysis shows that digital‐real integration increases production flexibility and supply–demand matching efficiency, thereby enhancing industrial competitiveness and elevating China's position in the global trade network. Extended analyses highlight the moderating roles of digital infrastructure and trade facilitation, showing that enhancement of digital infrastructure and trade facilitation amplifies these positive effects.

The authors examine an issue at the nexus of domestic competition policy and international trade, the interaction between goods trade and market power in domestic trade and distribution sectors. Theory suggests a set of linkages between service-sector competition and goods trade supported by econometrics involving imports of 22 OECD countries compared with 69 exporters. Competition in services affects the volume of goods trade. Additionally, because of interaction between tariffs and competition, the market structure of the domestic service sector becomes increasingly important as tariffs are reduced. Empirically service competition apparently matters most for exporters in smaller, poorer countries. The results also suggest that while negotiated agreements leading to cross-border services liberalization may boost goods trade as well, they may also lead to a fall in goods trade when such liberalization involves foreign direct investment leading to increased service sector concentration.

Credit ratings have contributed to the current financial crisis. Proposals to regulate credit rating agencies focus on micro-prudential issues and aim at reducing conflicts of interest and increasing transparency and competition. In contrast, this paper argues that macro-prudential regulation is necessary to address the systemic risk inherent to ratings. The paper illustrates how financial markets have increasingly relied on ratings. It shows how downgrades have led to systemic market losses and increased illiquidity. The paper suggests the use of ‘ratings maps’ and stress-tests to assess the systemic risk of ratings, and increased capital or liquidity buffers to manage such risk.

The World EconomyVolume 31, Issue 12 p. 1695-1699 THE WORLD ECONOMYIndex to Volume 31 First published: 03 December 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9701.2008.index_v31.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume31, Issue12December 2008Pages 1695-1699 RelatedInformation

Sovereign wealth funds have rapidly become significant international institutions. The performance of funds varies substantially across countries, but comprehensive and systematic analyses of funds have been hampered by the lack of transparency of most funds. The relative transparency of the Norway Fund allows us to do an econometric analysis of the Fund’s performance. The record resembles that of a mutual fund that has taken on greater risk over time. There is no evidence that the Fund has disrupted foreign financial markets more than mutual funds do. There remains a question as to whether the Fund and its Finance Ministry have been effective agents for the Norwegian citizens whose assets they are managing.

ABSTRACT Relating the collected customs duty to the value of imports enables the estimation of a rate of applied duty that takes into account all pricing components and their use. Indeed, this ad valorem equivalent integrates the complex dimensions of customs duties, the measures of exemption and suspension, and those concerning preferential regimes. Processing collected duties for all the products reveals that the 1.5 per cent rate of duty actually applied in 2003 is the same for the EU and the US. Nevertheless, it appears that the US taxes more the least developed countries (LDCs) and developing countries than does the EU. Thus, setting aside those products which enter free of duty, the rate of taxation applied by the US is 15 per cent and 6.2 per cent respectively with regards to LDCs and developing countries, whereas in the EU it is only 3.7 per cent and 4.1 per cent. In the US market the sectors that are the most highly taxed upon importation are textiles, apparel and clothing, cotton and articles of leather, whereas in the EU it is more agricultural and food products (fruits and preserves, meats, sugars and cereals).

In his 1987 Developing Countries in the GATT System, Robert Hudec concluded that the identity of developing countries in the GATT system was primarily a matter of their demanding non-reciprocal and preferential treatment, developed countries responding grudgingly to those demands and that this situation had been unfruitful either to support developing country reforms or to discipline developed country restrictions aimed at developing countries. Hudec was pessimistic about the relationship becoming more productive, but his expression of despair offered a glimmer of hope: ‘There are those who believe that the GATT has become so committed to the current policy that the only way to change it would be to start a new organization’. A new organisation was started, the World Trade Organization, but has the WTO achieved what Hudec hoped a new organisation might? At the 1987–95 Uruguay Round, developing country leaders acted as Hudec had hoped. They used international rules and bindings as leverage to support their own internally-driven reforms; to overcome generations of accumulated protection, to lock in reforms against the backsliding that had undone previous reforms. Dealing with the Uruguay Round's ‘unbalanced outcome’ and the overlapping ‘implementation problem’ have shaped the Doha Round, but the negotiations have misconceived and mismanaged both issues. Rather than seeking to identify their real economics, the negotiations have gone back to the traditional idea of special and differential treatment. Perhaps the largest cost of this mismanagement is that in many developing countries the unilateral momentum for liberalisation has waned. To the extent that the Doha negotiations have drawn attention away from the domestic issues that were the basis of developing country liberalisation – and enhanced the status of negotiators relative to the leaders who fought at home for reform – they have contributed to that waning.

The World EconomyVolume 31, Issue 1 p. 1-4 Introduction – The Sequencing of Regional Economic Integration Jeffrey H. Bergstrand, Jeffrey H. Bergstrand University of Notre Dame and CESifo,Search for more papers by this authorAntoni Estevadeordal, Antoni Estevadeordal Inter-American Development Bank andSearch for more papers by this authorSimon J. Evenett, Simon J. Evenett University of St. Gallen and CEPRSearch for more papers by this author Jeffrey H. Bergstrand, Jeffrey H. Bergstrand University of Notre Dame and CESifo,Search for more papers by this authorAntoni Estevadeordal, Antoni Estevadeordal Inter-American Development Bank andSearch for more papers by this authorSimon J. Evenett, Simon J. Evenett University of St. Gallen and CEPRSearch for more papers by this author First published: 18 January 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9701.2007.01079.xCitations: 6Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume31, Issue1January 2008Pages 1-4 RelatedInformation

The paper first reviews Europe's experience with regional integration, stressing the political economy forces that governed the direction and speed of the process. It argues that the geographic spread of economic integration in Europe is driven by a domin o effect by which each successive integration increases the pressure on non-participa nts to join the integration effort. On the depth of integration, the paper argues that the path of European integration - from completion of the customs union, to the Single Market programme, to the Maa stricht T reaty and monetary union - was dictated by a political economy dynamo set in motion by the unique institutional featur es established by the 1957 T reaty of Rome. Consequently, the lessons for other regions must be considered with great care.