Global Economy Journal

As the world continues to navigate a global pandemic that ignores national borders, it is not surprising to find a divide between the interests of vaccine-producing countries — and their entire supply chain networks for intermediates and raw materials — and countries that are primarily reliant on these producers for their vaccine consumption. This paper puts this debate in the context of a multi country strategic game where the major players have been able to produce a vaccine for COVID-19 and control the distribution of the vaccine and all its components.

To address this issue of sovereign players, some have raised the possibility of a GATT/WTO intervention into COVID-19 vaccine sale and distribution. In addition, a legal battle is taking shape over lucrative patent rights for COVID-19 vaccines, with drug companies pitted against each other and government and academic scientists over who invented what. At the heart of the disputes is the billion-dollar question: Who can claim to have invented important elements of the COVID-19 vaccines?

In June 2022, the WTO struck deals on a partial patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines. Most observers believe that this change to the intellectual property rules will have limited impact on actual production for now because a current surplus of vaccines globally means there is little demand among vaccine makers to increase output. The implications are clear. The WTO compromise has allowed the existence of high hurdles for exports of products made under such a license. Given the limited WTO compromise agreement there are several options available to solve the problem of lack of access to the COVID-19 vaccine consuming nations at this stage.

First, the US Supreme Court could invalidate each of the pharmaceutical companies’ patent requests. Second, individuals could file legal actions designed to disgorge the monopoly revenue of these pharmaceutical companies. If no legal action is taken, along these lines, and the WTO compromise is insufficient to solve the COVID-19 vaccine shortages in the developing world, then the developed countries will be opening the gate to PRC delivery of their COVID-19 vaccine to the entire developing and emerging markets.

Modern resource markets are globalized, which gives significant advantages to countries that own these resources. The proceeds from the sale of resources to global markets can serve as a financial phase for the implementation of important government development programs for a country. The paper examines the influence of the economic and political aspects of globalization on the export operations of the OPEC and OPEC+ member countries. A statistical study of the dependence of export volume dynamics on the KOF Globalization Index and its components was carried out, which made it possible to quantitatively assess the impact of political and economic globalization on OPEC countries’ exports by developing a mathematical model that would describe the relationship of these indicators. The OPEC and OPEC+ countries were grouped depending on those components of the globalization indicator that affect export volumes, that is, according to the level of countries’ involvement in globalization.

Empirical research on the effects of culture on national entrepreneurship rates has been inconclusive, leading to contradicting theories to explain these mixed results. Results have also been sensitive to which covariates are in the empirical analysis. Given that culture might affect entrepreneurship directly and indirectly through institutions, we model the Direct and Total Effects of culture on entrepreneurship accounting for possible endogeneity effects. We use recent innovations in econometrics that are robust to model selection errors to estimate the direct and Total Effects of culture on entrepreneurship across countries. Using GLOBE’s nine dimensions of culture on an expanded sample size, we find that Future Orientation, Gender Egalitarianism, Assertiveness, and Institutional Collectivism have robust positive Total Effects on national entrepreneurship. In contrast, Uncertainty Avoidance has a robust negative Total Effect on entrepreneurship. We also find that the Total Effect is greater than the Direct Effect for Assertiveness, Institutional Collectivism, and Uncertainty Avoidance and smaller than the Total Effect for the remaining—Performance Orientation, Future Orientation, Humane Orientation, In-Group Collectivism, Gender Egalitarianism, Power Distance. This suggests strong institutions that serve as a catalyst that engenders entrepreneurship in high Assertiveness, high Institutional, and high Uncertainty Avoidance cultures. Conversely, in high-Performance Orientation, Future Orientation, Humane Orientation, In-Group Collectivism, Gender Egalitarianism, and Power Distance countries, strong institutions can sometimes impose significant compliance burdens that dampen the natural cultural proclivity that supports institutions and entrepreneurship.

Using data from the OECD-Trade in Value Added (TIVA) database, this paper analyzes Tunisia’s national and sectoral participation and positioning in global value chains (GVC) during 2005–2015. This paper also aims to illustrate countries with which Tunisia is highly integrated into GVC, by exploring the countries of origin of foreign value added in Tunisian exports, and the countries exporting Tunisian domestic value added share of its gross exports. Tunisia is among the most integrated countries, during the whole period of study. It has a high level of participation in GVC in many industrial activities, particularly in the textile, clothing and leather sector, food processing, and electronic and electrical equipment. The backward linkage in its GVC integration can be explained by the choice of specialization in its production, which roughly explains its position in the middle-stream–downstream. However, its participation in value chains remains regional rather than global. Around 60% of its GVC participation is with European countries. Overall, our results suggest that Tunisia has a potential that has been well exploited for the period 2005–2010 (period before the Tunisian revolution). However, this success remains limited since political and socio-economic crises have limited the potential of Tunisia’s current participation in the GVC.