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Abstract
International trade appears to be strongly dependent on the political environment and institutional arrangements. In this context, the commented strand of economics is expected to follow the relationships that can be turbulent. The paper reviews the available literature on international trade, with a particular focus on aspects of the political economy. These threads are described in the context of the past and present literature, as well as prospects for future research. Over the decades, the focus of the debate has shifted strongly. The analysed issues reflect not only current events affecting the shape of international trade, but also the availability of data or the growing range of quantitative tools. The observed progress and evolution of the political economy of international trade has brought numerous conclusions of scientific and practical importance.

AbstractCOVID-19 disrupted both social and economic development in several dimensions. Governments of the vast majority of countries implemented strategies to battle the pandemic and its negative consequences. The question is, which countries can be assessed as successful in that matter? In this study, we use empirical tools to investigate which governmental actions and state characteristics appear proper, as reflected by pandemic misery indices. The results of our study imply that fiscal measures taken solely are not enough to confront the negative outcome of the pandemic. Interestingly, a strong rule of law, high government effectiveness, and low corruption seem to help countries get through COVID-19. These conclusions may be useful for policymakers in the context of the current and future negative shocks.

AbstractWhile the economic approach to constitutions highlights their contribution to resolving conflict, recent work on the de jure–de facto distinction in relation to various constitutional rules suggests that political conflict and polarization could play a role in explaining the size and evolution of the gap between constitution text and constitutional practice. In this paper, we are interested in the relationship between the degree of conflict in the political arena within the state, captured by the polarization of the political landscape, as well as the underlying political polarization in society, and compliance of government actors with the country's constitution. Based on a number of theoretical arguments, we provide an empirical investigation for ca. 170 countries in the period 1975–2020, using the new Comparative Constitutional Compliance Database. Our results suggest that constitutional non-compliance is associated with more intense political polarization in society, but it does not seem to be correlated with polarization of the political landscape.