The (New) Geography of International Trade and Investment: Exploring the extent to which 'distance' matters in the establishment of economic relations

经济学和商业学者普遍认为，北美自由贸易协定和欧盟等区域贸易协定为包括加拿大和英国在内的成员国提供了利益，这些利益可能会受到北美自由贸易协定重新谈判（Caliendo和Parro， 2015）和英国退欧（Dingra等人，2018）的威胁。因此，加拿大和英国都在寻求使其贸易和投资伙伴多样化，包括更遥远的国家。针对这些担忧，我们的知识综合项目将确定距离对各国与更遥远的伙伴建立牢固的贸易和投资关系的能力的影响。它回应了“技术和数字化转型、跨境服务贸易和地理”的主题。它代表了一项国际倡议，致力于综合有关加拿大和英国在全球贸易领导中的作用的知识。这个项目很及时，因为加拿大和英国的贸易关系对两国和全球市场都有深刻的社会文化、政治和经济影响。经济地理学和商学方面的重要文献长期以来提供了强有力的证据，证明“距离”很重要，其中距离不仅包括物理距离，还包括文化和制度距离。例如，有证据表明，当各国拥有共同的边界、共同的语言和共同的制度结构时，双边贸易和投资流动会更大。这些程式化的事实为贸易和投资协议提供了潜在的背景，并解释了为什么这么多协议是“区域性的”。与此同时，随着知识跨越国界的扩散，这些共性可能促进和增强贸易和外国直接投资（FDI）的潜在利益。我们要解决的问题是，在一个更加全球化的世界里，特别是在一个技术可能使所有形式的距离变得不那么相关的世界里，这些关于距离相关性的程式化事实是否已经改变了。这种可能性的一个特别表现是城市的兴起，以及知识型公司倾向于（共同）设在数量相对较少的大型和多样化的城市。因此，我们打算调查最近关于知识型产业（包括服务业）贸易和投资流动的文献，以检验距离是否重要以及如何重要。我们还将调查城市对这些流动影响的证据。我们的加拿大-英国合作将1)为国家和地区/城市政府组织提供研究机会，包括与贸易、创新、就业有关的部委和寻求促进外国直接投资和技术创新的城市当局；2)与对国际化和创新的区位战略感兴趣的大公司以及就这些问题向公司和政府提供咨询的咨询集团合作；3)向英国和加拿大的国际商业学者学术界、智库和政策界传播我们的主要发现。

It is a widely held view among economics and business scholars that the regional trade agreements such as NAFTA and EU have provided benefits to member countries, including Canada and the UK, and that these might be threatened by renegotiation of the NAFTA agreement (Caliendo and Parro, 2015), and BREXIT (Dingra et al, 2018). Thus, both Canada and the UK seek to diversity their trade and investment partners to include more distant countries. In response to such concerns, our knowledge synthesis project will identify the impact of distance on the ability of countries to establish strong trade and investment ties with more distant partners. It responds to the theme of "Technological and digital transformations, cross-border trade in services, and geography." It represents an international initiative devoted to synthesizing knowledge about the roles of Canada and the UK in global trade leadership. This project is timely because Canada-UK trade relationships have profound sociocultural, political, and economic implications for both countries and global markets.A significant literature in economic geography and business has long provided strong evidence that'distance' matters, where distance includes not only physical distance, but also cultural and institutional distance. For example, there is evidence that bilateral trade and investment flows are greater when countries share a common border, a common language, and common institutional structures. These stylized facts provide the underlying context for trade and investment agreements and explain why so many of them are 'regional'. At the same time, these commonalities may facilitate and enhance the potential benefits of both trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) as knowledge spills over across borders.The question we will address is whether these stylized facts about the relevance of distance havechanged in a more globalized world, and in particular one where technology may make all forms ofdistance less relevant. A particular manifestation of this possibility is the rise of cities and the tendency for knowledge-based firms to (co) locate in a relatively small number of large and diverse cities. We therefore intend to survey the recent literature on trade and investment flows in knowledge-based industries (which includes services) to examine whether and how distance matters. We will also survey the evidence on the impact of cities on these flows.Our Canada -UK collaboration will 1) make research accessible to national and regional/city governmental organizations, including Ministries concerned with trade, innovation, employment and urban authorities seeking to promote FDI and technological innovation; 2) engage with major companies interested in location strategies for internationalization and innovation as well as consultancy groups advising firms and governments on these matters; 3) disseminate our principal findings to the academic community of international business scholars as well as think-tanks and the policy community in the UK and Canada.