New features, forgotten costs and counterfactual gains of the international trading system

We critically survey the literature dealing with some of the significant changes that have recently occurred in international trade flows and policies. The aim is to offer a ‘road map’ through large swathes of literature and inform the profession of recent developments that can assist us as we seek to analyse agricultural markets and policies. In the first part, we analyse the increasing importance of global value chains and highlight the systemic structure of trade relations. In the second part, we run through the most recent literature that assesses the impacts of trade liberalisation. On the one hand, increasing attention has been paid to the trade adjustment costs; on the other hand, the new (new) trade theory has provided valuable insights in order to better estimate gains from trade.