In World Trade Systems of the East and West, Geoffrey C. Gunn profiles Nagasaki's historic role in mediating the Japanese bullion trade, especially silver exchanged against Chinese and Vietnamese silk. Founded in 1571 as the terminal port of the Portuguese Macau ships, Nagasaki served as Japan's window to the world over long time and with the East-West trade carried on by the Dutch and, with even more vigor, by the Chinese junk trade. While the final expulsion of the Portuguese in 1646 characteristically defines the “closed” period of early modern Japanese history, the real trade seclusion policy, this work argues, only came into place one century later when the Shogunate firmly grasped the true impact of the bullion trade upon the national economy.

Covers trends from 1957 to 1995.

The book provides theoretical and empirical evidence on how world trade evolves, how trade affects resource allocation, how trade competition affects productivity, how China shock affects world trade and how trade affects large and small countries. It is a useful reference which focuses on new approaches to international trade by looking into country-specific as well as firm-product level-specific cases.

In less than three decades, China has grown from playing a negligible role in international trade to being one of the world's largest exporters, a substantial importer of raw materials, intermediate outputs, and other goods, and both a recipient and source of foreign investment. Not surprisingly, China's economic dynamism has generated considerable attention and concern in the United States and beyond. While some analysts have warned of the potential pitfalls of China's rise—the loss of jobs, for example—others have highlighted the benefits of new market and investment opportunities for US firms. Bringing together an expert group of contributors, China's Growing Role in World Trade undertakes an empirical investigation of the effects of China's new status. The essays collected here provide detailed analyses of the microstructure of trade, the macroeconomic implications, sector-level issues, and foreign direct investment. This volume's careful examination of micro data in light of established economic theories clarifies a number of misconceptions, disproves some conventional wisdom, and documents data patterns that enhance our understanding of China's trade and what it may mean to the rest of the world.

The History and Future of the World Trade Organization is a comprehensive account of the economic, political and legal issues surrounding the creation of the WTO and its evolution. Fully illustrated with colour and black-and-white photos dating back to the early days of trade negotiations, the publication reviews the WTO's achievements as well as the challenges faced by the organisation, and identifies the key questions that WTO members need to address in the future. The book describes the intellectual roots of the trading system, membership of the WTO and the growth of the Geneva trade community, trade negotiations and the development of coalitions among the membership, and the WTO's relations with other international organisations and civil society. Also covered are the organisation's robust dispute settlement rules, the launch and evolution of the Doha Round, the rise of regional trade agreements, and the leadership and management of the WTO.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. Rethinking the ways global history is envisioned and conceptualized in diverse countries such as China, Japan, Mexico or Spain, this collections considers how global issues are connected with our local and national communities. It examines how the discipline had evolved in various historiographies, from Anglo Saxon to southern European, and its emergence in Asia with the rapid development of the Chinese economy motivation to legitimate the current uniqueness of the history and economy of the nation. It contributes to the revitalization of the field of global history in Chinese historiography, which have been dominated by national narratives and promotes a debate to open new venues in which important features such as scholarly mobility, diversity and internationalization are firmly rooted, putting aside national specificities. Dealing with new approaches on the use of empirical data by framing the proper questions and hypotheses and connecting western and eastern sources, this text opens a new forum of discussion on how global history has penetrated in western and eastern historiographies, moving the pivotal axis of analysis from national perspectives to open new venues of global history.

Changing Patterns of Global Trade outlines the factors underlying important shifts in global trade that have occurred in recent decades. The emergence of global supply chains and their increasing role in trade patterns allowed emerging market economies to boost their inputs in high-technology exports and is associated with increased trade interconnectedness.The analysis points to one important trend taking place over the last decade: the emergence of China as a major systemically important trading hub, reflecting not only the size of trade but also the increase in number of its significant trading partners.

Provides the first global analysis of the relationship between trade and civilisation from the beginning of civilisation until the modern era.