From Tariffs to AI Fraud: The Evolution and Transmission Chains of New-Era Trade Risks in Cross-Border E-Commerce Clusters
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63808/ftd.v2i3.493Keywords:
Cross-Border E-Commerce, Trade risk, Risk contagion, Industrial cluster, AI-Enabled FraudAbstract
Cross-border e-commerce clusters bring together large numbers of small exporters using common platforms and logistics, but the various risks involved in these transactions, including volatile tariffs and carbon border taxation as well as fraud that takes place through generative artificial intelligence, are considered separately. This paper seeks to clarify how shocks from one type of risk can resurface in another and propagate within the cluster firms. Building upon the idea of risk contagion, the risk in the new era of international trade is identified as falling under three main families, their evolutionary pathways analyzed, and the results aggregated into a transmission chain model consisting of four components: risk source, coupling node, transmission path, and amplification condition. It is found that working capital and platform accounts are the key coupling points, while cluster density, shared infrastructure, and firm homogeneity are the factors that transform the shocks at the level of single firms into system-level risks.
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