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This study looks at whether Kazakh and Russian wheat exporters leverage their dominant share of the wheat markets in the South Caucasus to exercise market power. We apply a three-stage estimation for systems of simultaneous equations and Zellner’s seemingly unrelated regression to analyze residual demand elasticity. The results of both estimations provide empirical evidence of Russian market power in the wheat markets of the South Caucasus but no evidence of a Kazakh oligopoly. Russian exporters possess greater market power in Armenia than in Georgia. Market power depends on the presence of competitors in the destination market. The results show that Kazakh exporters restrict the market powers of Russian exporters in the Azerbaijani wheat market, while Russian exporters constrain the market power of Kazakh exporters in the Azerbaijani and Georgian wheat markets. Ukrainian wheat exporters are able to intervene in the market powers of Russian exporters in Azerbaijan and Georgia, while they restrict Kazakh oligopoly in the Georgian market. Some export restrictions imposed by wheat exporting countries significantly affected competition in wheat importing countries. Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and the blockade of Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea are restricting wheat trade, severely damaging Ukraine’s competitiveness and export potential, and reducing food security in the South Caucasus, the Middle East, and North Africa.

As a result of COVID-19, the export of medical goods has been subject to various global restrictions. Consequently, several countries have increased the supply of medical goods to alleviate the effects of this health crisis. This study entails a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of such remedial measures. To this end, we have utilized a consistent conjectural variation in a three-country model entailing firms competing in two reciprocal markets in Cournot. When the restrictions are unilateral, the number of medical goods available in the exporting country tends to increase, culminating in better management of the pandemic. In contrast, bilateral restrictions typically reduce the total output of medical goods; therefore, they are inappropriate in a pandemic situation.

As a conflict between two major agricultural powers, the Russia–Ukraine war has various negative socioeconomic impacts that are now being felt internationally and might worsen, notably, for global food security. If the war deepens, the food crisis will worsen, posing a challenge to many countries, especially those that rely on food imports, such as those in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Simultaneously, the war came at a bad time for global food markets because food prices were already high due to disruptions in the supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, strong global demand, and poor harvests in some countries. Understanding how conflict-related disruptions in global food and fertilizer markets might affect price and availability is critical for understanding the overall impact on global food security. Further, four months into the war, its implications for food security suggest that this review is timely, urgent, and highly needed. Accordingly, this paper aims to investigate the Russia–Ukraine war’s direct and indirect impact on global food security. The paper highlights that the war resulted in immediate and far-reaching cascading consequences on global food security: Ukrainian exports have stopped, conscription and population displacement have caused labor shortages, access to fertilizers is restricted, and future harvests are uncertain. First, Ukraine’s export capacity has been hampered. Secondly, conscription and population displacement caused labor shortages. Thirdly, access to vital agricultural products such as fertilizers is also constrained. The war may delay spring planting and winter crop harvesting. Further, the war has indirect and cascading effects. Indeed, rising fertilizer costs may reduce their use and crop yields. Moreover, as seen during the 2007–2008 food crisis, export restrictions and speculation are driving up international prices and worsening the situation. Furthermore, the war triggered a panic buying movement at country and individual levels. Finally, the war may jeopardize the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably SDG 1 (No poverty), SDG 2 (Zero hunger), and DG 12 (Responsible consumption and production). However, the consequences of the war on food security are being exacerbated by a variety of underlying rigidities, vulnerabilities, and inefficiencies in global food systems. Accordingly, the transition toward healthy, equitable, and ecologically sustainable food systems must be strengthened by adopting urgent and long-term reforms and policies.

Export restrictions on raw materials are applied to achieve a number of policy objectives. However, they can have a significant and negative impact on the efficient allocation of resources, international trade, and the competitiveness and development of industries in both exporting and importing countries.  By diverting exports to domestic markets, export restrictions raise prices for foreign consumers and importers. At the same time, by reducing domestic prices in the applying countries and increasing global uncertainty concerning future prices, export restrictions negatively affect investment, thus potentially reducing the overall supply of raw materials in the long term. In view of existing alternative policy tools that have a different impact on trade, the effectiveness of export restrictions to achieve stated policy objectives should be carefully reviewed.  This publication presents a selection of papers discussed at the OECD Workshop on Raw Materials, held in Paris in October 2009. This workshop was organised in response to the growing concern on the use of export restrictions on raw materials, particularly by emerging economies.

This study examines the impact of India's wheat export ban on the domestic wheat market amid the 2022 food price crisis. Study uses nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach. Findings show an asymmetric transmission of changes in global prices to domestic prices in the long and short run under an open trade regime. The transmission elasticity for positive changes in world wheat prices is 53 percentage points higher than that of a negative change in world wheat prices. We found a symmetric relationship between the world and domestic wholesale wheat prices in the export-restricted regime. Export ban was not successful in curbing rise in wheat price increases.

The US-China trade war forced a reluctant semiconductor industry into someone else's fight, a very different position from its leading role in the 1980s trade conflict with Japan. This paper describes how the political economy of the global semiconductor industry has evolved since the 1980s. That includes both a shift in the business model behind how semiconductors go from conception to a finished product as well as the geographic reorientation toward Asia of demand and manufactured supply. It uses that lens to explain how, during the modern conflict with China, US policymakers turned to a legally complex set of export restrictions targeting the semiconductor supply chain in the attempt to safeguard critical infrastructure in the telecommunications sector. The potentially far-reaching tactics included weaponization of exports by relatively small but highly specialized American software service and equipment providers in order to constrain Huawei, a Fortune Global 500 company. It describes potential costs of such policies, some of their unintended consequences, and whether policymakers might push them further in the attempt to constrain other Chinese firms.