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Biodiversity threats from Red Lists are linked with patterns of international trade, identifying the ultimate instigators of the threats; developed countries tend to be net importers of implicated commodities, driving biodiversity decline in developing countries. The biodiversity cost of international trade This study develops a global model linking threatened-species records published in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List to worldwide industries causing these threats through the production of commodities such as agricultural crops and timber. Close to one-third of global species threats are due to international trade, according to this model. The resulting 'biodiversity footprint' reveals how consumers in developed countries drive species threats in developing countries. The United States, European Union and Japan emerge as the main final destinations of biodiversity-implicated commodities, with the coffee, rubber, cocoa, palm oil, fisheries and forestry industries among the most destructive. Human activities are causing Earth’s sixth major extinction event 1 —an accelerating decline of the world’s stocks of biological diversity at rates 100 to 1,000 times pre-human levels 2 . Historically, low-impact intrusion into species habitats arose from local demands for food, fuel and living space 3 . However, in today’s increasingly globalized economy, international trade chains accelerate habitat degradation far removed from the place of consumption. Although adverse effects of economic prosperity and economic inequality have been confirmed 4 , 5 , the importance of international trade as a driver of threats to species is poorly understood. Here we show that a significant number of species are threatened as a result of international trade along complex routes, and that, in particular, consumers in developed countries cause threats to species through their demand of commodities that are ultimately produced in developing countries. We linked 25,000 Animalia species threat records from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List to more than 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries and evaluated more than 5 billion supply chains in terms of their biodiversity impacts. Excluding invasive species, we found that 30% of global species threats are due to international trade. In many developed countries, the consumption of imported coffee, tea, sugar, textiles, fish and other manufactured items causes a biodiversity footprint that is larger abroad than at home. Our results emphasize the importance of examining biodiversity loss as a global systemic phenomenon, instead of looking at the degrading or polluting producers in isolation. We anticipate that our findings will facilitate better regulation, sustainable supply-chain certification and consumer product labelling.

Platform-based payment services such as mobile wallets (Mwallet) provide a unique value proposition to both customers and firms over other digital payment methods. Interestingly, the story of platform-based mobile payments adoption is unfolding differently across countries, with some emerging countries (China and India) outperforming developed countries. Using extant literature in International Business/International Marketing, industry reports, and qualitative interviews, we present a conceptual framework for mobile payments adoption at an aggregate level for customers and retailers. We present a set of hypotheses and derive the explanations using the literature on network effects and institutional theory. We test our framework on a diverse set of 30 countries and confirm the presence of network effects and the differential impact of perceived value, inertia, and culture on the adoption level of innovators and imitators. Importantly, we find a significant level of within-and between-country heterogeneity for mobile payment adoption, which provides further evidence for leapfrogging by emerging countries in the context of the mass adoption of mobile payments. These findings have significant implications for theory and practice in multinational organizations.

Food retail has been in continuous evolution for the past century—both in developing and developed countries—from local traditional stores to supermarkets to e-commerce. In this paper we analyze the evolution of food retail by building a store choice equilibrium model and providing an illustrated discussion. The patterns in retail in any given time and place of different types of stores (such as traditional shops, supermarkets, and online e-commerce) depend on two main factors. The first are consumers’ characteristics such as income, tastes, and travel costs of going to different stores and/or shipping costs if purchasing online. The second are the stores’ cost structures, which include item costs from upstream producers, the costs of procurement supply chains (beyond the cost of the item) for perishable items, and the costs of in-store storage. We show under what conditions in equilibrium the different retail types exist and which can become dominant, and what types of goods (dry packaged foods versus perishables) are distributed by what type of retailers.

Objective To quantify the relation between food prices and the demand for food with specific reference to national and household income levels.Design Systematic review with meta-regression.Data sources Online databases of peer reviewed and grey literature (ISI Web of Science, EconLit, PubMed, Medline, AgEcon, Agricola, Google, Google Scholar, IdeasREPEC, Eldis, USAID, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute), hand searched reference lists, and contact with authors.Study selection We included cross sectional, cohort, experimental, and quasi-experimental studies with English abstracts. Eligible studies used nationally representative data from 1990 onwards derived from national aggregate data sources, household surveys, or supermarket and home scanners.Data analysis The primary outcome extracted from relevant papers was the quantification of the demand for foods in response to changes in food price (own price food elasticities). Descriptive and study design variables were extracted for use as covariates in analysis. We conducted meta-regressions to assess the effect of income levels between and within countries on the strength of the relation between food price and demand, and predicted price elasticities adjusted for differences across studies.Results 136 studies reporting 3495 own price food elasticities from 162 different countries were identified. Our models predict that increases in the price of all foods result in greater reductions in food consumption in poor countries: in low and high income countries, respectively, a 1% increase in the price of cereals results in reductions in consumption of 0.61% (95% confidence interval 0.56% to 0.66%) and 0.43% (0.36% to 0.48%), and a 1% increase in the price of meat results in reductions in consumption of 0.78% (0.73% to 0.83%) and 0.60% (0.54% to 0.66%). Within all countries, our models predict that poorer households will be the most adversely affected by increases in food prices.Conclusions Changes in global food prices will have a greater effect on food consumption in lower income countries and in poorer households within countries. This has important implications for national responses to increases in food prices and for the definition of policies designed to reduce the global burden of undernutrition.

In recent years, there has been an ongoing, worldwide debate about the representation of females in companies. Our study aimed to meta-analytically investigate the controversial relationship between female representation on corporate boards and firm financial performance. Following a systematic literature search, data from 20 studies on 3097 companies published in peer-reviewed academic journals were included in the meta-analysis. On average, the boards consisted of eight members and female participation was low (mean 14%) in all studies. Half of the 20 studies were based on data from developing countries and 62% from higher income countries. According to the random-effects model, the overall mean weighted correlation between percentage of females on corporate boards and firm performance was small and non-significant (r = .01, 95% confidence interval: -.04, .07). Similar small effect sizes were observed when comparing studies based on developing vs. developed countries and higher vs. lower income countries. The mean board size was not related to the effect sizes in studies. These results indicate that the mere representation of females on corporate boards is not related to firm financial performance if other factors are not considered. We conclude our study with a discussion of its implications and limitations.

International trade affects CO 2 emissions by redistributing production activities to places where the emission intensities are different from the place of consumption. This study focuses on the net emission change as the result of the narrowing gap in emission intensities between the exporter and importer. Here we show that the relocation of production activities from the global North (developed countries) to the global South (developing countries) in the early 2000s leads to an increase in global emissions due to the higher emission intensities in China and India. The related net emissions are about one-third of the total emissions embodied in the South-North trade. However, the narrowing emission intensities between South-North and the changing trade patterns results in declining net emissions in trade in the past decade. The convergence of emission intensities in the global South alleviates concerns that increasing South-South trade would lead to increased carbon leakage and carbon emissions. The mitigation opportunity to green the supply chain lies in sectors such as electricity, mineral products and chemical products, but calls for a universal assessment of emission intensities and concerted effort. International trade redistributes production activities to regions with varying emission intensities. This study finds that the convergence of emission intensities between the global South - North and changes in trade patterns have resulted in declining net emissions in trade in the past decade.

The advancement of digitalization is gradually transforming the existing structure of the global economy. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, almost all cross-border transactions had a digital component in 2016. This is also reflected by the growing literature on digitalization and E-commerce. Yet, studies specifically focusing on E-commerce policy are scarce compared with other areas in this domain. By going beyond academic articles and including policy documents in our analysis, this study takes stock of the issues as well as the policy recommendations identified in these publications. Our analysis reveals that to promote an inclusive E-commerce participation, it is imperative to design policies that improve countries’ formal institutions, facilitate the inclusion of less-developed countries in the E-commerce space, and enhance E-commerce adoption by small- and medium-sized enterprises. We highlight the significance of collaboration between and solidarity among governments and other stakeholders.

Traditional consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions accounting attributed the gap between consumption-based and production-based emissions to international trade. Yet few attempts have analyzed the temporal deviation between current emissions and future consumption, which can be explained through changes in capital stock. Here we develop a dynamic model to incorporate capital stock change in consumption-based accounting. The new model is applied using global data for 1995–2009. Our results show that global emissions embodied in consumption determined by the new model are smaller than those obtained from the traditional model. The emissions embodied in global capital stock increased steadily during the period. However, capital plays very different roles in shaping consumption-based emissions for economies with different development characteristics. As a result, the dynamic model yields similar consumption-based emissions estimation for many developed countries comparing with the traditional model, but it highlights the dynamics of fast-developing countries. Traditional carbon accounting attributes gap between consumption- and production-based emissions to international trade. The authors develop a dynamic model that incorporates capital stock change and find it improves estimates for fast-developing countries.