Export dynamics since the Great Trade Collapse: a cross-country analysis

Using a panel model of goods exports for 16 OECD economies, we quantify advanced economies’ export performance since the ‘Great Trade Collapse’ (GTC). We go beyond the traditional determinants of trade to include a variable measuring shifts in the sectoral composition of world trade and split the real exchange rate into its constituent parts to allow for a differential response to unit labour costs and the nominal exchange rate. We find that, a pre-crisis model based on average coefficients explains the recovery in aggregate exports since the GTC well. But at the country level, we do find substantial cross-country variation in export performance.