De-Globalisation? Global Value Chains in the Post-COVID-19 Age

Pol Antrà s

No 15462, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper evaluates the extent to which the world economy has entered a phase of de-globalisation, and it offers some speculative thoughts on the future of global value chains in the post-COVID-19 age. Although the growth of international trade flows relative to that of GDP has slowed down since the Great Recession, this paper finds little systematic evidence indicating that the world economy has already entered an era of de-globalisation. Instead, the observed slowdown in globalisation is a natural sequel to the unsustainable increase in globalisation experienced in the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. I offer a description of the mechanisms leading to that earlier expansionary phase, together with a discussion of why these forces might have run out of steam, and of the extent to which they may be reversible. I conclude that the main challenge for the future of globalisation is institutional and political in nature rather than technological, although new technologies might aggravate the trends in inequality that have created the current political backlash against globalisation. Zooming in on the COVID-19 global pandemic, I similarly conclude that the current health crisis may further darken the future of globalisation if it aggravates policy tensions across countries.

Keywords: Globalisation; Global value chains; Trade wars; Covid-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15462 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15462

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15462

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().