Trade, of products, services and information/knowledge, has been one of the paramount forces making the world global. It is central to debates about the effects of globalization and individual responses to them. While economic research suggests that the intensity of external trade improves with the quality of institutions and the rule of law, we also explore the reverse relationship as frictions affect the established order.

Comparing Europe and America offers fertile ground: supply chains, for example, in both regions are distinctly continental, but increasingly reach out to the same third space, Asia (cf. Gereffi/Fernandez-Stark 2016). How do these shifting geographies of capital and production interact? How do states and multinational corporations as the main actors in the field shape and respond to transnational markets and production? How do those challenges affect global and regional economic development and inequalities?

Coordinators:

Olga Popova (IOS, Economics)

Thomas Steger (UR: Faculty of Business, Economics and Management Information Systems)

Former coordinators:

Richard Frensch (IOS and UR: Faculty of Business, Economics and Management Information Systems) - from September 2019 to December 2021