Episode
S9 Ep44: How superpowers shape trade
- Podcast
- VoxTalks Economics
- Published
- Jul 29, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 954
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://audioboom.com/posts/8933687
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Summary
Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics. Tariffs move trade around, but so does economic power. When one economy dominates, other countries fall into step with it. They trade with the dominant economy, and also with each other. Alberto Martin (Barcelona School of Economics, CEPR) is one of a team that has tracked the influence of hegemons, large dominant economies, on trade from the start of the 19th century. In our latest VoxTalk he tells Tim Phillips about how they used treaties (not necessarily about trade) as a proxy for alignment, and built a database of 77,000 of them signed between 1800 and 2020 to test their theory. Hegemons sign a disproportionate share of these international agreements. After treaty-signing, trade links become stronger. But treaty-signing has fallen sharply over the past 15 years, as much as it did during the two world wars. If we are heading towards a multipolar world, might what will the absence of a global hegemony do to trade? The research behind this episode: Broner, Fernando, Alberto Martin, Josefin Meyer, and Christoph Trebesch. 2025. "Hegemonic Globalization." CEPR Discussion Paper 20339 (gated). To cite this episode: Phillips, Tim, and Alberto Martin. 2025. "How superpowers shape trade." VoxTalks Economics (podcast). About the guest Alberto Martin is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Research in International Economics (CREI), an Adjunct Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Research Professor at the Barcelona School of Economics, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, where he directs the International Macroeconomics and Finance programme. His research spans macroeconomics, finance, and international economics, including asset bubbles, credit cycles, sovereign debt, and the…