Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy home pageResearch
Our research and impact are grouped under three interdisciplinary themes:
- People, Firms and Places
Studies the differential impact of trade across locations, firms and individuals in the four nations of the UK, and how external factors such as Brexit, Covid-19 and the rise of China affect the UK economy.
- Digitisation and Technical Change
Considers how governments wrestle with huge platform companies, and how digital trade affects labour markets, business models and value chains, and their regulation.
- Negotiating a Turbulent World
Explores how to formulate UK trade policy given the challenges to trading across the UK’s borders, differences in international regulatory regimes, the need for environmental sustainability and the interaction between trade and investment.
Innovation Fund
The Centre’s Innovation Fund aims to support small research projects on inclusive trade policy.
Round 2 will open for applications in September 2023.
Latest Research
The Stormont Brake – What Can We Learn from the Swiss–EU Relationship?
Research into public attitudes to trade
As part of its initial research, and working with NatCen, the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy conducted deliberative research on public attitudes towards UK trade policy, particularly aimed at understanding public views on the unavoidable choices and trade-offs that trade policy requires.
Early analysis reveals that people in the UK believe that economic growth and non-economic objectives, such as supporting human rights and combatting climate change, are both important when making decisions about trade.
Analysis of the participants’ reasoning as they decided how to make the trade-offs proposed to them reveals that fairness, regional as well as national interests, and favouring long-term over short-term outcomes were key considerations.