Shandre Mugan Thangavelu Comments on Impacts of Lockdown Policies on International Trade

Shandre Mugan Thangavelu, Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia, Sunway University and Institute for International Trade, University of Adelaide: This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 workplace closures and stayat-home orders on international trade using a gravity model. The paper suggests that the stay-at-home orders will reduce trade by decreasing import demand, while workplace closures, which mandate the closure of all non-essential workplaces, will reduce export supplies. This paper uses monthly world trade data to investigate how the two types of lockdown policies affect trade flows. They find a negative effect of workplace closures on trade except for intra-Asian trade, but stay-at-home orders had no significant and robust effects on trade.