What is economic diplomacy?

Bergeijk en Moons (2008), Economic Diplomacy and Economic Security, in C.Costa (ed.), New Forntiers of Economic Diplomacy, Lisboa discribe economic diplomacy as:

Building on the definition of Baine and Woolcock (2003, p.3) we can define the new economic diplomacy a set of activities (both regarding methods and processes for international decision making) related to cross border economic activities (export, import, investment, lending, aid, migration) pursued by state and non-state actors in the real world. Typically economic diplomacy consists of three elements:

• The use of political influence and relationships to promote and/or influence international trade and investments, to improve on functioning of markets and/or to address market failures and to reduce costs and risks of cross border transactions (including property rights). Typically this subfield of economic diplomacy comprises commercial policy, but also many activities of non governmental organisations (NGO’s) are relevant under this heading
• The use of economic assets and relationships to increase the cost of conflict and to strengthen the mutual benefits of cooperation and politically stable relationships, i.e. to increase economic security. This subfield both contains structural policies and bilateral trade agreements (aimed at achieving specific geographic trading patterns) and the political distortion of trade and investment as in the case of boycotts and embargoes.
• Ways to consolidate the right political climate and international political economic environment to facilitate and institute these objectives. This subfield covers multilateral negotiations and is the domain of the supranational organizations and institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union

I tend to agree with that view.