From the Editor

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the final issue of The International Trade Journal (ITJ)’s thirty-fifth volume. The articles in this issue look at a variety of important issues. These include the impact of democracy, culture, and policy on the COVID-19 pandemic, the effect of preferential trade agreements on foreign direct investment, the impact of an economic partnership agreement on exports from the Caribbean to Europe, and agri-food trade between Europe and Asia.

The first article in this issue, by Sheng Fang, Mike W. Peng, L. Colin Xu, and Yuanyuan Yi, looks at factors that affected the spread of COVID-19 and its mortality in 140 countries before the widespread adoption of vaccines. They find more urbanized countries and countries with worse air quality had more cases than other countries. Restrictions on international mobility, but not restrictions on domestic mobility, were associated with lower mortality rates. Democratic countries performed better than non-democratic countries in some ways: they appear to have imposed mobility restrictions more quickly than non-democratic countries and had lower mortality rates. They also appear to be more effective in reducing harm to vulnerable populations. Finally, highly individualistic countries appear to have had more cases than other countries in some model specifications.

The second article, by Hira Zahid, Malik Fahim Bashir, and Muhammad Tahir, looks at how preferential trade agreements (PTAs) affect foreign direct investment.¹ They calculate the combined market size of each country’s PTA partners and the average distance to these partners. They then show that countries whose PTA partners have larger markets attract more foreign direct investment. In contrast, they do not find a relationship between foreign direct investment and the average distance to the country’s PTA partners. Further, they find market size is only related to foreign direct investment in high and middle-income countries. The relationship is statistically insignificant for low-income countries.

The third article, by Roger Hosein, Rebecca Gookool, and George Saridakis, studies how the Economic Partnership Agreement between the Caribbean Forum and the European Union (EU) affected Caribbean exports into the EU.² They find that merchandise exports fell after 2008, when the agreement came into effect. After excluding the region’s traditional exports of sugar and bananas, they find the relationship becomes statistically insignificant. They argue that this could be due to declining complementarity between the two regions.

The final article, by Rosa Maria Fanelli and Alessandro Giglio, looks at agricultural and food trade between the EU and Asia. They construct several indices related to trade – the normalized trade balance, the degree of commercial coverage, Herfindahl-Hirschman indices for exports and imports, and an index of relative comparative advantage. They then use these indices to look at interdependence, similarity, and integration between the two regions from 2007 to 2017.

As usual, we would like to thank the people without whom the ITJ would not succeed. We would like to thank the authors who contribute their articles, the anonymous referees who give detailed and timely comments, the team at the International Trade Institute at Texas A&M International University who process submissions quickly and efficiently, our Editorial Board who guide the journal, and our publisher, Taylor and Francis, who ensures the ITJ keeps its high standards.

Notes

¹ In a recent study in the ITJ, Rahmouni and Debbiche (2017) look at how a regional trade agreement affected FDI between Tunisia and the EU.

² Several recent articles in the ITJ have looked at how other regional trade agreements have affected trade (Kaitibie and Rakotoarisoa 2017; Montant 2020).