Globalisation, strategic autonomy and economic resilience in times of crisis

Juan Carluccio, Professor in International Trade at Surrey Business School, and Maurizio Zanardi, Head of the School of Economics and Professor in Economics, were pleased to be able to welcome students, guests and speakers to this year’s conference at the World Bank headquarters in Paris on 16-17 May 2022 .

Organised jointly by Banque de France, CEPR, the University of Surrey and the World Bank, the two-day programme featured guest speakers and workshops to explore current developments in international trade and cross-border economic activity.

The past two years have brought with them unprecedented circumstances and, as a result, uncertainty in the economic strength of every country in the world. Disruption in trade and global value chains, climate-related tensions and of course, Covid have meant industry-wide restructures as we enter the new normal.

This year’s conference included guest speakers and academics including Prof Pol Antràs, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Dr Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Maryland, Devaki Ghose from the World Bank and Prof Steve Redding from Princeton.

Some of the highlights of the conference were the keynote lecture by Pol Antras (Harvard) who presented on the 'Global Sourcing and Multinational Activity: A Unified Approach'. The paper was motivated by the fact that global sourcing decisions by firms are interrelated, and thus a change in trade policy in a particular location can trigger effects that span beyond such locations, through global firms’ reallocation of activities. Subsequently Michele Mancini (European Central Bank) presented a paper on 'Measuring Countries and Sectors Exposure to Risk in Global Value Chains', co-authored with  Alessandro Borin, and Daria Taglioni. They suggested that the exposure to shocks is complex: in most countries and sectors, output is simultaneously exposed to supply and demand shocks.

While the keynote speech by Şebnem Kalemli- Özcan (Maryland), 'Unequal Global Vaccinations, Trade and the Great Supply Chain Disruption', made its mark around the impact of the Covid crisis on different economic outcomes:

1) SME failures

2) international spillovers of monetary policy, and

3) supply chain disruptions from unequal vaccination rates between developed and developing economies. 

The conference also had its spotlight on Prof Steve Redding from Princeton University who presented a paper called 'International Friends and Enemies', which discussed the effect that trade relationships between any two countries have on the political alignment of those countries. The paper derives a measure of exposure to productivity shocks in foreign countries that takes into account all general equilibrium effects, including those stemming from input-output linkages.

The world-leading event also involved several high-profile roundtables with Agnès Bénassy-Quéré (French Treasury), Beata Javorcik (EBRD, Oxford and CEPR) who asked whether globalization will return to business as usual or not after the current turmoil will. Simultaneously, Daria Taglioni (World Bank) further explored the question of Integration in global value chains (GVCs), and lean supply chains. While Pascal Lamy (Paris Peace Forum, former Director of WTO) contrasted the abundance of debate on deglobalization with the limited evidence that companies are profoundly rethinking their strategies so far. To conclude, Bruno Cabrillac (Bank of France), asked why, and how; should one think of strategic autonomy? He and others left many to think about the European Commission's new trade policy strategy.

Professor Juan Carluccio of the Surrey Business School was key to co-hosting this event with the Banque de France. It offered much-deserved visibility for the incredible work and forward-thinking of Professors Carluccio and Zanardi along with the entire academic panel.

The event took place 16-17 May 2022 at the World Bank, Paris

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