Research Chair Couche-Tard on GVCs
Neoliberal globalization is dead. Long live managed globalization.
We live in a world of global trade, and where complex products are manufactured—most often involving manufacturing processes spanning multiple countries—and shipped all over the world. The rapid expansion of international trade since the 1990s, driven by enhanced efficiency and lowest-cost production, has brought significant economic benefits. The interconnectedness that underpins global value chains (GVCs) also creates vulnerabilities. Multinational companies have been implicated in scandals involving exploitive working conditions in their suppliers for decades.
The past few years have highlighted the intricacy and fragility of global supply chains. Economic nationalism, geopolitical tensions, trade wars, COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change have radically exposed new vulnerabilities in the globally integrated systems of just-in-time inventory management and seamless, direct supply chains. Global buyers increasingly focus on supply chain resilience, diversification and sustainability, prioritising security over cost (as in “onshoring”/ “friend-shoring” strategies and ESG policies). Governments have shown an increasing willingness to use innovative policy tools that blend trade, investment, and subsidies with security concerns for nationalist and geopolitical ends (“geoeconomics”). Data localization requirements and other restrictions to data flows suggests that the digital world order is similarly fragmenting.
The Research Chair Couche-Tard on GVCs aims to better understand these dynamics in a rapidly changing world. Research in this area spans many sub-fields in political science (international political economy, international relations), economics (international trade, political economy), management (international business, supply chain management) and the related field of industrial relations, and law (international economic law).
Topics of interest include but are not restricted to:
1) GVC Resilience and Sustainability: how can global buyers implement sustainable practices to address environmental and social challenges in their supply chains? What firm strategies and policy reforms can enhance GVC’s reliability and resilience to geopolitical risks and climate change? How can supply chains diversification and risk mitigation strategies improve GVC resilience? What are the roles of social activists, international organizations, and other stakeholders in GVC governance?
2) Trade Policy: What are the effects of the inclusion and enforcement of non-trade issues in preferential trade agreements? How do concerns about national security, technology transfer, and supply chain resilience influence trade and investment policies? How does trade liberalization and, conversely, trade protectionism, as well as geopolitical fragmentation and the green energy transition, shape GVCs dynamics?
3) Regulation of Digital Technologies and Globalization: what role does technology play in increasing GVC resilience and sustainability? To what extent do geopolitics and distributional conflicts affect cross-border data flows regulations? How do national security concerns and political economy considerations influence public opinion on the regulation of social media platforms? What are the prospects for international cooperation over digital globalization?
