Trade Disruptions Along the Global Supply Chain

Alejandro G. Graziano and Yuan Tian
Additional contact information
Alejandro G. Graziano: University of Nottingham
Yuan Tian: University of Nottingham

No 243, Working Papers from Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE)

Abstract: In 2020, a pandemic generated by a novel virus caused a large and abrupt decline in world trade, only comparable within the last half-century to the Great Trade Collapse during the 2008-09 Financial Crisis. This collapse followed naturally from the difficulty of locally producing, transporting, and consuming goods in the affected regions worldwide. In this paper, we study the impact of these disruptive local shocks on international trade flows during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using rich product-level import data from Colombia, we first show that import collapse at the onset of the pandemic was due to a decrease in import quantities, and the import recovery in later periods was partially explained by a rise in both foreign export prices and shipping costs. Using smartphone data tracking local human mobility changes to identify local shocks, we decompose the trade effects into shocks originating from exporter cities, seaports, and importer cities. We find that while the decline in quantity was driven by both changes in exporter and importer shocks, the increase in price was entirely driven by exporter shocks. Using data on port calls made by container ships, we document a decline inport productivity during the pandemic. We show that mobility changes at port locations induced a decline in port efficiency and a rise in freight costs. We also document a positive correlation between product-level domestic inflation and mobility shocks to foreign exporters.

Keywords: International trade; local shocks; COVID-19 pandemic; shipping costs; mobility; supply chain; inflation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F14 F16 I12 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 84 pages
Date: 2023-05
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:

Downloads: (external link)
https://rednie.eco.unc.edu.ar/files/DT/243.pdf (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:aoz:wpaper:243

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Laura Inés D Amato ().