Can e-commerce mitigate the negative impact of COVID-19 on international trade?

This study aims to empirically investigate the role of E-commerce (EC) on the trade impacts of COVID-19. To this end, we estimate gravity equations for bilateral trade among 34 reporting countries and their 145 partner countries during January-August in 2019 and 2020. Our major findings can be summarized as follows. A larger number of confirmed cases or deaths in both importing and exporting countries significantly decrease international trade. However, we found that EC development in importing countries contributes to mitigating this negative effect of COVID-19 on trade while that in exporting countries does not. These results are robust for our use of multiple measures of EC development.

How effective was the restaurant restraining order against COVID-19? A nighttime light study in Japan.

In this study, we examined the effect of the order of shortening business hours of the restaurants, which are considered a major source of spreading the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Specifically, we empirically investigated how this order changed the nighttime light (NTL) in regions with restaurants in the Greater Tokyo area from January to June 2020. Several local governments in Japan had implemented the order to combat COVID-19. Our investigation found evidence that the order significantly decreased the NTL in regions with many restaurants, indicating the effectiveness of the order and its negative economic/business impacts on restaurants. Interestingly, this order increased the NTL in other areas, such as in residential areas. In contrast to previous studies focused on demand-side factors, our study revealed the importance of supply-side factors in explaining the impact of Japanese government policy against COVID-19 in the first half of 2020.

Impact of COVID-19 on trade in services.

During past shocks (e.g., the 2008-2009 global financial crisis), the services trade was found to be more resilient than the goods trade; however, the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has restricted cross-border mobility, which is disastrous to the services trade because it often requires physical proximity between suppliers and consumers. We empirically examined the impact of COVID-19 on the services trade using quarterly data from 146 countries in 2019 and 2020. Its severity is measured according to the number of cases, the number of deaths, and an index measuring the severity of lockdown orders. We found that the pandemic had a more significantly negative impact on the services trade than the goods trade, particularly on the import side. Moreover, the extent of the impact varied among disaggregated services sectors, reflecting the nature of services. Travel services were the most severely affected, followed by transport and construction services, which are largely related to the international movement of people and goods. On the other hand, other services typically provided as cross-border supply, including computer services, experienced almost no significant effect.

Who sends me face masks? Evidence for the impacts of COVID-19 on international trade in medical goods.

This study empirically investigates what kinds of countries imported and exported medical products during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine the bilateral trade values of medical products traded among 35 reporting countries and 250 partner countries between January and August in both 2019 and 2020. We shed light on four kinds of bilateral linkages, including political ties (captured by voting similarity in the United Nations), economic ties (existence of trade agreements), demographic ties (migrants) and geographical ties (distance). Our findings can be summarised as follows. An increase in COVID-19 burden leads to decreases in exports of medical products. However, such a decrease is smaller when exporting to countries with closer political, economic or geographical ties. In contrast, demographic ties play a key role in the import of personal protective products. Immigrants receive face masks from relatives in their home country when the immigrant's country of residence is strongly impacted by COVID-19.

Impacts of Vaccination on International Trade During the Pandemic Era.

This paper examines how COVID-19 vaccinations change international trade. We analyze monthly level trade data from January 2020 to March 2022 that cover the bilateral exports from 40 reporting countries to 220 partner countries. Our findings can be summarized as follows. On average, the effects of vaccination rates in importing and exporting countries on exports were found to be insignificant. When considering the income level, we also did not find significant effects of vaccination rates in high- and low-income importing countries on exports. In contrast, the rise of vaccination rates in low-income exporting countries significantly increased their exports though no significant increase in exports was detected when vaccination rates rose in high-income exporting countries. These results imply that since low-income countries are mainly engaged in labor-intensive industries, the relaxation of lockdown orders (i.e., movement and gathering restrictions) driven by the rise of vaccination rates plays a crucial role in production activities in low-income countries.

Impacts of COVID-19 on Global Value Chains.

We investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on global value chains by examining bilateral trade in finished machinery products from January to June in both 2019 and 2020. We use the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths as measures of the impact of the pandemic. Specifically, we investigate how these impacts affect value chains in three scenarios-countries that import finished machinery products, countries that export finished machinery products, and countries that export machinery parts to countries exporting finished machinery products-to assess the impacts on demand, output, and supply chain, respectively. In our analysis, the largest negative impacts were from supply chain effects, followed by output effects. In contrast, we did not find significant impacts from demand effects. We also found that output effects are not so strong in intra-Asian trade compared with trade in other regions.

The impact of COVID-19 on international trade: Evidence from the first shock.

This study investigates how the effects of COVID-19 on international trade changed over time. To do that, we explore monthly data on worldwide trade from January to August in 2019 and 2020. Specifically, our study data include the exports of 34 countries to 173 countries. We estimated the gravity equation by employing various variables as a proxy for the COVID-19 damage. Our findings can be summarized as follows: First, regardless of our measures to quantify the COVID-19 pandemic, we found significantly negative effects of COVID-19 on the international trade of both exporting and importing countries. Second, those effects, especially the effects of COVID-19 in importing countries, tended to become insignificant since July 2020. This result implies that the harmful impacts of COVID-19 on international trade were accommodated after the first wave of the pandemic to some extent. Third, we found heterogeneous effects across industries. The negative effects on non-essential, durable products persist for a long time, whereas positive effects in industries providing medical products were observed.

How is the Asian economy recovering from COVID-19? Evidence from the emissions of air pollutants.

This study examines how economic and social activities in Asia were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, using the emissions of various air pollutants as representative measures of those activities. Our review of emissions data suggests that the amount of air pollutants emitted decreased in most subnational regions from 2019 to 2020. We also determined that economic and social activities have restarted in some regions in many countries. Moreover, we conduct regression analyses to identify the types of regions that restarted earlier. Regional characteristics are distinguished by employing a remotely sensed land cover dataset and OpenStreetMap. Results reveal that in the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) forerunners, economic and social activities in cropland, industrial estates, accommodations, restaurants, education, and public services have not yet returned to previous levels.