Daria Taglioni on international trade and supply chains post COVID-19

Daria Taglioni joins the WIDER Webinar Series on 24 November 2020 to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on global value chains, and what this means for development. To find out more about the topic read the World Development Report 2020 – Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains.

International trade and supply chains: what can we tell about their recovery post COVID-19

The growth of international trade and the expansion of Global Value Chains (GVCs) over the last 30 years have had remarkable effects on development. Incomes have risen, productivity has gone up, and poverty has fallen. The fragmentation of production and knowledge transfer inherent in GVCs are in no small part responsible for these advances. Hyperspecialization by firms at different stages of production enhances productivity and efficiency, and durable firm-to-firm relationships foster technological transfer and access to capital and inputs along value chains.

At this moment however there is reason to worry that this trade-led path to development is under threat. Since 2008 trade and GVC growth have languished. COVID-19 has brought further concerns. Many governments now worry about the robustness and resilience of GVCs. This seminar will discuss emerging evidence on new patterns of international trade and global value chains, current policy challenges, and implications for development.   

Selim Raihan joins as discussant to provide insights on how COVID-19 has affected international trade in South Asia and the potential impacts on the region's place in global value chains in the future.

UNU-WIDER director Kunal Sen will chair the event.

About the speakers

Daria Taglioni is Research Manager, Trade and International Integration, Development Research Group at the World Bank. She joined the World Bank Group in 2011 as Senior Trade Economist in the International Trade Department of the Poverty Reducation and Economic Management Network (PREM).  Since then, she has held various positions and roles, including Team-Task Lead for the World Development Report 2020, Principal Economist in the International Finance Corporation, and World Bank’s Global Lead on Global Value Chains.

Previously, she worked as Senior Economist at the European Central Bank (ECB) and as Economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). She has published in the American Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, and other scholarly journals. Her work has been featured in international media outlet such as the New York Times and Forbes. She authored various books on international trade. She is Italian and holds a PhD in International Economics from the Graduate Institute, Geneva. 

Selim Raihan is Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and the Executive Director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM). He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK.

He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and an alumni of the Harvard University’s program on “Cutting Edge of Development Thinking”. Dr Raihan possesses vast expertise in empirical research on international trade, economic growth, poverty, labour market, macroeconomic policies, political economy, and climate change issues. He has worked on applied economics, especially assessing impacts of trade and economic policies, using country-specific and global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, and micro and macro-econometric modelling and estimation techniques. He has a long experience in teaching international trade, economic modelling, quantitative economics, econometrics, development economics, and poverty dynamics. 

Dr Raihan has more than 15 years of experience in conducting international and national training programmes on economic modelling in various countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Mongolia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Dr Raihan has published several journal articles, books, book chapters and working papers.