Call for Papers

The era of international trade expansion and liberalisation has seemingly come to a halt. World trade is no longer growing at the pace it did before 2008 and the participation in global value chains (GVCs) – which increased rapidly from 1990 to 2007 – has stalled and in some cases even reversed. These developments are occurring in a context in which tariff and non-tariff barriers have become an ever more frequent reality, with the number of harmful trade interventions on the rise since 2012 and strongly accelerating since 2017. On the financial side, a “new normal” has been emerging with respect to the size and composition of capital flows, with the demand for safe assets reaching record levels. On the other hand, the activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and special purpose entities (SPEs) have further expanded, making it increasingly difficult to interpret traditional national accounts statistics and cross-border financial positions.