Impacts of COVID-19 public measures on country-level trade flows: Global panel regression analysis

As of 10 July 2021, there have been over 186 million cases of COVID-19 and more than four million died as a result of this disease. The COVID-19 outbreak has also contributed to tremendous global decline in trade flows. The rapid spread of COVID-19 and the measures implemented by governments to contain the pandemic have had serious consequences for the world’s economies. While the pandemic has affected the international movement of people, goods and services, there is still limited systematic research regarding the possible associations between the COVID-19 measures on countries’ international trade flows. To fill this gap, we conducted regression analysis based on country level time series data from the United Nations and World Bank datasets. The results of the random effects panel regression models show that, the country import and export values are positively affected by health-related policies, while there is a negative association between stringency measures and import and export values. More specifically, school closing, stay-at-home requirements, and testing policy measures were found to have significant negative effects on countries’ trade values. In contrast, facial covering policies were found to have significant positive effects on countries’ import, export and total trade values.