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Global Health Econ Sustain

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Determinants of the imports of essential medical

products by European Union

Luisa Marti*, and Rosa Puertas
Group of International Economics and Development, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de
Vera s/n, Valencia, Spain

Abstract
The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a marked distortion in
the trade of medical products needed to combat its severe effects on the health
of infected individuals. This study sought to examine the determinants of imports
by the 27 countries of the European Union (EU-27), through a panel data analysis
for the period 2015 – 2020. The aim is to shed light on the distinct behavior of
imports of each of the seven products classified as essential by the World Customs
Organization and the World Health Organization. To that end, economic and social
characteristics of the buyer country were treated as explanatory variables, along with
the origin of the goods and the effect of the virus in 2020. The results showed that
several determinants of imports of medical goods have a homogeneous influence
on all of these products. This is also in line with gross domestic product per capita
and population, which showed positive and significant coefficients for all products.
The level of wealth of a country reflects its purchasing power, and thus capacity to
Academic editor: purchase essential goods. Furthermore, an aged population in a territory is indicative
Mihajlo Jakovljevic M.D. Ph.D. MAE of the greater need for essential medical products, which was amplified in 2020 due
*Corresponding author: to the high vulnerability of this group to the symptoms of the virus. The present study
Luisa Marti (mlmarti@esp.upv.es) confirmed that EU-27 trade agreements curbed the mass entry of non-EU products
Citation: Marti, L., & Puertas, R. and that COVID-19 pandemic increased imports of certain products.
(2023). Determinants of the imports
of essential medical products by
European Union. Global Health Keywords: COVID-19; Medical products; Imports; Panel data
Econ Sustain, 1(2): 1207.
https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.1207
Received: June 29, 2023
Accepted: August 31, 2023 1. Introduction
Published Online: October 24, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) had paralyzed the world for months, sparking
2023 a global crisis that had hit all aspects of the economy: a fall in trade and production,
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). skyrocketing unemployment, and rising public debt caused by the huge stimulus
This is an Open-Access article packages designed to prevent collapse (Gereffi, 2020). These ramifications triggered rapid
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution social reversal, widened the inequalities, and exposed the precariousness of healthcare
License, permitting distribution, in almost all the countries affected. In this context, there is a clear need to maintain
and reproduction in any medium, international trade relations, both to ensure the supply of essential products and to send
provided the original work is
properly cited. a signal of confidence to international markets (OECD, 2020a).
Publisher’s Note: AccScience The medical treatment of COVID-19 necessitates a huge volume of supplies that
Publishing remains neutral with no country has ever predicted. COVID-19 has caused a widespread shortage of certain
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional health-care products, most notably in countries hardest hit by the pandemic. Against this
affiliations. backdrop, trade has gone from being occasionally complementary to domestic supply

Volume 1 Issue 2 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.1207