Seminars, Webinars, & High-level Events
Webinar on Presenting the Paper: Quantitative Trade with Ships
September 15, 2026
The International Monetary Fund–Middle East Center for Economics and Finance (IMF-CEF) and the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA), in collaboration with the EU-Mediterranean and African Network for Economic Studies (EMANES), are pleased to invite you to a webinar PRESENTING the paper:
Quantitative Trade with Ships
This webinar is part of the IMF-CEF / EMEA Joint Research Webinar Series on Regional Economic Policy Challenges aimed at connecting frontier, policy-relevant economic research with pressing macroeconomic and financial policy challenges across the Arab and Mediterranean regions.
Date: Tuesday, 15 September 2026
Time: 2:00 to 3:15 pm (Kuwait time)
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZtkQen18Tr6K7RSffbGufA
Chairs:
Dr. Sami Ben Naceur, IMF-CEF Director
Prof. Rym Ayadi, EMEA President and EMANES Director
Speaker:
Sonali Chowdhry, Research Associate at DIW Berlin and Fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Moderator:
Dr. Sandra Challita, EMEA Research Fellow and EMANES Coordinator
Background:
Recent disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz have underscored the importance of resilience in global shipping networks. This paper examines an often-overlooked margin of adjustment: how countries and sectors depend on specific vessel categories. Using US bills of landing, ship registry, and AIS-based port call data, the authors document new evidence on vessel deployment, ship switching, shipbuilding specialization, and fleet composition across country pairs. They also exploit the 2016 Panama Canal expansion to estimate substitution across vessel size classes. The paper then introduces endogenous vessel choice into a quantitative trade model to assess the trade and welfare effects of vessel-specific policies, including fees on Chinese-built ships entering US ports and the inclusion of maritime transport in the EU Emissions Trading System.
A discussion and Q&A session will follow the presentation.
Link to the paper: Quantitative Trade with Ships
