Robert Zymek

Graph of the Bilateral Trade in Services (BiTS) database coverage. While trade debates focus on tariffs and goods, services have quietly defied deglobalisation and become an increasingly important driver of growth. Services trade not only generates productivity spillovers and labour-market gains, but it is also where future policy tensions could emerge. Yet services trade remains under-measured and under-studied. This column introduces the new Bilateral Trade in Services (BiTS) database, which tracks services flows between countries over time and at the detailed sector level. It documents a declining distance elasticity for services trade in recent years, which is driven by the growing importance of less distance-sensitive service categories.

Nan Li, Sergii Meleshchuk, & @zymek.bsky.social introduce the new Bilateral Trade in Services (BiTS) database, which tracks services flows between countries over time and at the detailed sector level. They document a declining distance elasticity for services trade.
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky

The analysis in our chapter is based on a new database on bilateral services trade which we have been compiling for the past year. We expect to publish it for others to use later this summer.

However, it appears that trade in modern services (the fastest-growing portion of international services trade) is most vulnerable to geoeconomic fragmentation. This could emerge as a headwind for services globalisation going forward.

We find that - in contrast with goods trade - the answer is: no (so far!).

My colleague Nan Li and I contributed a chapter on services trade. We ask: is there evidence that geopolitical alignments are reshaping bilateral trade in services? (In IMF parlance: is there “geoeconomic fragmentation” in services?)

CEPR today released a new eBook on “The State of Globalisation” (edited by @baldwinre.bsky.social and Michele Ruta). It explores how technology, policy and geopolitics are transforming globalisation: cepr.org/voxeu/column...

World Economic Outlook, April 2025: A Critical Juncture amid Policy Shifts The latest World Economic Outlook reports a slowdown in global growth as downside risks intensify. While policy shifts unfold and uncertainties reach new highs, policies need to be calibrated to rebal...

Full report: www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

📈IMF April WEO📉:
2025 global growth forecast would have been 3.2% pre-April 2 (down just 0.1 from January). It is 2.8% given the post-April 2 trade policy announcements. Even if all “tariff pauses” become permanent, global growth remains at 2.8% (but differently distributed across countries).

I stand corrected. The formula is not deficit/imports. The formula is surplus/(imports * ε * φ), where ε = -4 and φ = 0.25. That happens to equal deficits/imports.

ustr.gov/issue-areas/...

via @ericadyork.bsky.social

🚨New data alert!

A beta version of the Global Tariff Database is now available! 🔗https://feodorateti.github.io

🔎If you're looking for cross-country data on bilateral tariffs, this might help you.

1/ 📢 New paper alert! 📄 Together with Vitalii Tubdenov, we propose a measure of the "Average Period of Production" (APP) to capture the temporal dimension of production processes. It is inspired by Böhm-Bawerk’s capital theory.

Today marks the 180th anniversary of the birth of great Irish/Oxford economist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth.

Most remembered now by students for the Edgeworth Box, he was the founding editor of the Economic Journal and is buried less than 400 feet from the Economics Dept with a beautiful Celtic cross.

Trade Talks Trade Talks, with Chad P. Bown. A podcast about the economics of trade and policy.

Trade talks is back! Scientific insights on trade: tradetalkspodcast.com

Nice chart by @chrisgiles.ft.com putting the scale of President Trump‘s tariff announcements in historical context. www.ft.com/content/c2e4...

Trade and globalization Greater openness to international trade has had significant impacts on the structure of the UK and other advanced economies. The role that this greater ope

The adverse effects of trade and globalization have become politically salient in a way that many of the other determinants of inequality have not. | Trade and Inequality | The IFS-Deaton Review | all open access | academic.oup.com/ooec/article...

Modern supply chains don't look like trade theory 101!

They involve constant border crossings, each now hit by tariffs.

Tariffs raise prices, but the more important thing they do is disrupt supply relationships.

1/

New at JIE: "Changing global linkages: A new Cold War?" by Gita Gopinath, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas (@pgourinchas.bsky.social), Andrea F. Presbitero, Petia Topalova

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2024.104042

CALL FOR PAPERS!

What: Workshop on Growth, Trade and Geography
Where: BSE Summer Forum, Barcelona
When: June 10-11, 2025
Submission Deadline: February 28, 2025

events.bse.eu/live/files/5...

I hope to see many of you there!!! Please circulate!

Conventional wisdom seems to be that for many important services (think tourism!) the exporter has much better information about the extent/value than the importer.

Unlike with goods, there is no customs data on which to base services trade statistics - just firm surveys, the methodology of which may not be consistent across countries. And the extent to which they capture the “truth” may not be symmetric between the importer and exporter.

Opinion | To restore global growth, ease barriers for entrepreneurs The United States leads the world in the efficiency of its economy. The world can catch up.

“That will require transformational reforms to lift productivity. In many countries, resources—including workers and capital—simply aren't flowing to the most dynamic firms, dragging average global productivity growth down by 0.6 percentage points annually.” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

I used to teach the history of the gravity equation in trade - but was oblivious to the long history of gravity in urban/spatial economics (until I worked on gravity and the spread of Covid-19 with Ale Cuñat: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)

Image of the Moon, on a background of the blackness of space, and foreground at right of Earth's atmosphere in shades of blue, taken by ESA astronaut André Kuipers from the ISS in 2012.

Hello @bsky.app, here's to looking into more #bluesky and beyond... 😉

🚨New dataset alert 🚨Explore a large-scale survey of US respondents on how inflation has impacted them as consumers, workers, and asset holders. 📊 Includes rich open-ended responses and questions about emotions 👉
socialeconomicslab.org/research/pub...

Last Sunday Mario Draghi delivered a forceful speech, arguing that Europe has fallen into a vicious cycle of weak domestic demand, insufficient macroeconomic stimulus, depressed investment and low productivity growth cepr.org/system/files....

Here's a 🧵 on recent research related to this view.

Soaring Abuse of “National Security” Exceptions Has Wrecked the Multilateral Trading System Since 2019, there has been a massive surge in “National Security” notifications at the WTO. Many of these are covers for rank protectionism.

Soaring Abuse of “National Security” Exceptions Has Wrecked the Multilateral Trading System

My latest CFR Geo-Graphics blog post . . .
on.cfr.org/3ZZRTc6

What will be the economic impact if the EU pursues its goals for EV adoption and allows China to capture a big share of the EU car market? Jiaxiong Yao and I provide some answers in this F&D article: www.imf.org/en/Publicati... (non-technical; gory details here: www.imf.org/en/Publicati...)

Back in Barcelona for a special occasion: the 30th anniversary of CREI @upfbarcelona.bsky.social 🎉 I owe a huge debt to the people here for teaching us, by example and with much patience, what good research in international economics can look like. We need it now more than ever!

I am very excited about this paper we wrote with Jack Rossbach:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....