The 2019 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization Successfully Took Place in Vienna

5th December 2019
KCG Secretary
News
News
As part of a multi-year cooperation between the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) and KCG, the 2019 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization (FGI) “The Future of Global Value Chains (GVCs): How the Fourth Industrial Revolution is Changing Global Production Networks” took place on November 19, 2019 at the UNIDO Headquarters in Vienna. The 2019 FGI brought together around 100 policymakers[...]

Wan-Hsin Liu Gave an Interview on China’ Investment in Europe and on Huawei in 5G Networks

3rd December 2019
KCG Secretary
Public Contributions
Public Contributions
With its economic reforms for decades, China is now the second largest economy in the world. Since the turn of the new century, the Chinese government has increasingly encouraged Chinese firms to go out and invest abroad. A strong increase in Chinese firms’ investment engagement abroad can be observed particularly after the financial crisis 2008/2009. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China proposed by its President Xi Jinping in 2013 that mainly aims at improving connectivity between China/Asia and Europe through investing in large-scale infrastructure projects[...]

Finn Ole Semrau on the Need for Implementing SDGs in a Recent Citizen Dialogue

28th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Public Contributions
Public Contributions
Eliminating global extreme poverty and limiting the temperature increase of climate change are long-term challenges for all. These challenges are not limited to the national boundary. Thus global governance is required in bringing individual and national efforts together to deal with them efficiently. Accordingly, in the framework of the United Nations[...]

Best Paper Award to KCG Research on Global Standards and Philosophy of Consumption

26th November 2019
KCG Secretary
News
News
A recent KCG paper titled “Global Standards and Philosophy of Consumption: Towards Consumer-driven Governance of Global Value Chains", co-authored by Guli-Sanam Karimova (KCG Fellow), Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink (KCG Co-Head), and Prof. Dr. Johannes Brinkmann (BI Norwegian Business School & KCG External Research Fellow) received the Patrick Primeux Best Paper Award 2019 at the 26th International Vincentian Business Ethics Conference (IVBEC) on October 24-26, 2019 in Dublin[...]

Introducing Dominant Currency Pricing in the ECB’s Global Macroeconomic Model

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Georgios Georgiadis and Saskia Mösle (International Finance, 2020, 23(2): 234–256)

A large share of global trade being priced and invoiced primarily in U.S. dollar rather than the exporter's or the importer's currency has important implications for the transmission of shocks. We introduce this “dominant‐currency pricing” (DCP) into ECB‐Global, the ECB's macroeconomic model for the global economy. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to incorporate DCP into a major global macroeconomic model used at central banks or international organisations. In ECB‐Global, DCP affects in particular the role of expenditure‐switching and the U.S. dollar exchange rate for spillovers: In case of a shock in a non‐U.S. economy that alters the value of its currency multilaterally[…]

Rules of Origin and the Profitability of Trade Deflection

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Gabriel Felbermayr, Feodora Teti and Erdal Yalcin (Journal of International Economics, Vol. 121, Nov. 2019, 103248)

When a country grants preferential tariffs to another, either reciprocally in a free trade agreement (FTA) or unilaterally, rules of origin (RoOs) are defined to determine whether a product is eligible for preferential treatment. RoOs exist to avoid that exports from third countries enter through the member with the lowest tariff (trade deflection)[…]

Revisiting the Euro’s trade cost and welfare effects

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Gabriel Felbermayr and Marina Steininger (Forthcoming, Journal of Economics and Statistics)

When, about twenty years ago, the Euro was created, one objective was to facilitate intra-European trade by reducing transaction costs. Has the Euro delivered? Using sectoral trade data from 1995 to 2014 and applying structural gravity modeling, we conduct an ex post evaluation of the European Monetary Union (EMU). In aggregate data, we find a significant average trade effect for goods of almost 8 percent, but a much smaller effect for services trade[…]

Under Which Conditions Are Consumers Ready to Boycott or Buycott? The Roles of Hedonism and Simplicity

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Stefan Hoffmann, Ingo Balderjahn, Barbara Seegebarth, Robert Mai and Mathias Peyer (Ecological Economics, 2018, Vol. 147, 167-178)

There are two fundamental ways in which consumers can express their concerns and obligations for society through their consumption decisions: They can boycott companies that they deem to be irresponsible or they may deliberately buy from companies that they perceive to act responsibly[…]

Drivers of Renewable Technology Adoption in the Household Sector

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Anke Jacksohn, Peter Grösche, Katrin Rehdanz and Carsten Schröder (Energy Economics, 2019, Vol. 81, 216-226)

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we undertake a simultaneous assessment of the importance of factors that are individually found to be significant for the adoption of renewable energy systems by households but are not yet tested jointly[…]