Shocked by COVID: Exporting along Global Value Chains

Holger Breinlich, Jun Du and Oleksandr Shepotylo

No 20253, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of protectionist policies on exports within global value chains (GVCs), using the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment. Leveraging UK customs data (2017–2020) and a shift-share identification strategy, we estimate an elasticity of exports with respect to intermediate imports of 0.4. A one standard-deviation increase in COVID restrictions in sourcing countries led to a 3.7% decline in intermediate exports. These findings reveal a paradox: policies aimed at self-sufficiency can harm export performance by disrupting supply chains. The study highlights the vulnerabilities of GVCs and the unintended consequences of protectionist trade policies, offering insights into the trade-offs between resilience and open trade networks.

Keywords: Covid-19; Global value chains; Firm-level exports; Shift-share design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20253 (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:20253

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20253

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 ().