Research by Aksel Erbahar, Assistant Professor in the department of Economics at Erasmus School of Economics, is creating significant international impact. ‘This is not ivory tower research; it’s impacting the world around me. How cool is that!’, he says.
Invitation by the US International Trade Commission
In his paper “Trade Protection along Supply Chains”, Aksel and his co-authors examine the impact of trade protection in the US on employment levels along the supply chain, and find substantial job losses in downstream sectors. In their analysis, they discovered that many of the trade protection decisions, namely imposition of antidumping measures, by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) were influenced by politics, favoring industries in swing states. Aksel says: ‘The ITC got a hold of our paper and invited us to present, and the participants were rather intrigued by our findings.’
Advice on discrepancies in trade barriers between the UK and the EU
Thanks to this and some of his other research, Aksel was contacted by one of the largest economic consultancies in Europe, Frontier Economics, to help them advice the UK’s Trade Remedies Authority. Aksel: ‘Because of Brexit, the UK had to establish a new trade remedies authority. Before that the trade policy of the UK was decided by the European Commission so the UK didn’t need a separate institution. One of their tasks is to make sure that foreign firms are not taking advantage of discrepancies in trade barriers between the UK and the EU to circumvent goods through other countries and flood the UK market.’
He continues: ‘My task was to come up with a data-intensive checklist to detect circumvention of antidumping duties, a commonly used type of trade barrier that can discriminate exporters from certain countries. The exercise stressed the importance of minimizing false positives due to the potentially harmful effects of high duties on downstream industries. The project also revealed that detecting circumvention requires also qualitative analyses such as company visits to support the quantitative exercise.’
Societal Impact Award
In June 2022, Aksel Erbahar received the School’s Societal Impact Award. This prize is presented to a faculty member who has made an important contribution to the societal impact of the school’s research or towards a more inclusive working environment at Erasmus School of Economics.
- Assistant professor
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For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media & Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, mobile: +31 6 53 641 846.