Files
Abstract
While the decades leading up to the 2010s were characterized by a steady increase in global integration fueled by gains from trade, the past decade and a half has seen a notable shift in the attitudes towards international trade. Terms such as friendshoring, de-coupling, de-globalization, and others have entered the popular vernacular with growing national security concerns. Previously driven by mostly traditional concepts such as comparative advantage, it is apparent that trade, in general, is now also determined by national security and strategic interests. Additionally, issues such as climate change, Covid-19, and conflicts, in combination with existing concerns, have led to a significant rethink on the part of the policymakers. This study uses novel approaches to identify the effects of these uncertainties on international agriculturaltrade flows, with particular attention to geopolitical risks. The first chapter employs a Bayesian methodology to compare the differences between anomalies related to production and those related to policy uncertainties. The second chapter models international trade as a network graph to illustrate the ongoing changes in the global food supply chain. The third chapter identifies the causal effects of two key drivers of policy uncertainty, climate change and conflicts, on the extensive margins of trade. The findings from this study serve to highlight the growing need for additional analysis on the changing trade
patterns and inform policymakers on the evolution of global food supply chains.