The authors consider whether any special circumstances justify departure from free trade in telecommunications equipment.

In recent decades, the international economy has witnessed fundamental changes in the way manufacturing is organised: products are no longer manufactured in their entirety in a single location. Instead, the production process is often split across a number of stages located in countries that are frequently far apart from each other. By spreading out their manufacturing and supply chain activities globally through international investment and intra-firm trade, Multinational enterprises (MNEs) play a focal role in this reorganisation of production. Our ability to understand the global economy, therefore, requires an understanding of the interdependencies between the entities involved in such fragmented production. Traditional methods and statistical approaches are insufficient to address this challenge. Instead, an approach is required that allows us to account for these interdependencies. The most promising approach so far is network analysis. ‘Networks of International Trade and Investment’ makes a case for the use of network analysis alongside existing techniques in order to investigate pressing issues in international business and economics. The authors put forward a range of well-informed studies that examine compelling topics such as the role of emerging economies in global trade and the evolution of world trade patterns. They look at how network analysis, as both an approach and a methodology, can explain international business and economics phenomena, in particular, in relation to international trade and investment. Providing a comprehensive but accessible explanation of the applications of network analysis and some of the most recent methodological advances in its field, this edited volume is an important contribution to research in international trade and investment.

Advances in digital technology have driven large decreases in the costs of data transfer and telecommunications. There is a consequent increase in many kinds of international trade. One of the fastest-growing parts of this industry is "remote maintenance" whereby Indian companies debug software for companies in other parts of the world, often taking advantage of time zone differences to offer overnight service. In the existing literature on trade theory, however, relatively few attempts have been made to address the theme of communications networks and the role of time zones. The main purpose of this book is to illustrate, with simple models of international trade, how the introduction of communications networks and the utilization of time zone differences can affect both the structure of international trade and world welfare. Other technological aspects of recent international trade (e.g., competition between international standards, the impact of switching costs on imported products’ introduction) are also examined. Although a focus on theoretical trade models, the book will appeal to scholars, policy makers and business units who wish to learn from the recent changes in communications networks and its impact on the global economy. It provides information and suggestions for better policy formulation in the fast-changing world economy.

In recent years, liberalization, privatization and deregulation have become commonplace in sectors once dominated by government-owned monopolies. In telecommunications, for example, during the 1990s, more than 129 countries established independent regulatory agencies and more than 100 countries privatized the state-owned telecom operator. Why did so many countries liberalize in such a short period of time? For example, why did both Denmark and Burundi, nations different along so many relevant dimensions, liberalize their telecom sectors around the same time? Kirsten L. Rodine-Hardy argues that international organizations – not national governments or market forces – are the primary drivers of policy convergence in the important arena of telecommunications regulation: they create and shape preferences for reform and provide forums for expert discussions and the emergence of policy standards. Yet she also shows that international convergence leaves room for substantial variation among countries, using both econometric analysis and controlled case comparisons of eight European countries.

Recent research suggests that trade costs influence the pattern of specialization and trade, but there is limited empirical research on the determinants of trade costs. The existing literature identifies a range of barriers that separate nations, but then typically focuses only on transport costs. Although communication costs figure prominently in intuitive explanations and casual observations, they have played little role in the formal analysis of trade costs. The authors seek to examine whether this neglect matters, and whether the inclusion of the magnitude and variation of communication costs across partner countries can add value to existing explanations of the pattern of trade. The authors develop a simple multi-sector model of "impeded" trade that generates hypotheses in a gravity-type estimation framework. The main proxies for bilateral communication costs are the per-minute country-to-country calling prices charged in the importing and exporting countries. The use of bilateral variations in prices yields estimates that are superior to the ones obtained from country-specific measures of communication infrastructure used in previous studies. The authors find that international variations in communication costs have a significant influence on bilateral trade flows, at the aggregate level and for most individual sectors disaggregated according to the 2-digit SITC classification. Since information and communication needs are likely to be much greater for differentiated goods, the authors test whether trade in these products is more sensitive to variations in the costs of communication. Using the Rauch classification of product heterogeneity, the estimates suggest that the impact of communication costs on trade in differentiated products is as much as one-third larger than on trade in homogenous products. Finally, the authors verify, to the extent possible, that the significance of communication costs is not driven by their endogeneity or by omitted variables.

The first comprehensive analysis of the applicability of international trade law to digital services at multilateral and regional levels.