The effect of global financial crisis on trade elasticities: Evidence from BRIICS countries and Turkey

The effect of the global financial crisis on the international trade patterns of developed countries has been one of the main focuses of recent studies. However, the dependence level of world trade on emerging markets increases every day. Therefore, it is important to study the level of the negative effect of the crisis on emerging economies and the level of their recovery potential. This paper empirically studies the effects of the financial crisis on changes in the trade elasticities of BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa) countries and Turkey. The imperfect substitute model (Goldstein and Khan 1985) for the export and import demand functions is used. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration is applied to test the cointegration relationships between exports and imports and their determinants and in order to estimate the export and import elasticities in the countries under examination. The empirical results provide enough evidence to conclude that changes in the exchange rate did not play significant role in export and import demand functions before the global financial crisis and after. However, foreign and domestic incomes are found highly significant and elastic in export and import demand functions, respectively. It is found as well that the global financial crisis had increasing effect on export and import responsiveness to foreign and domestic incomes respectively, except for Turkey and Brazil in the export demand function and South Africa in the import demand function.