Why is the U.S. share of world merchandise exports shrinking?

Benjamin Mandel ()

Current Issues in Economics and Finance, 2012, vol. 18, issue Feb

Abstract: As the U.S. share of the world goods trade slips from its level in the 1980s and 1990s, concerns have arisen that the productivity of U.S. exporters has not been growing as fast as that of foreign firms selling similar products. However, an analysis of industry-level trade data suggests that two other factors explain much of the drop in export share: the changing composition of the products traded internationally and the diminished share of U.S. GDP in global output. Declining relative productivity may have played a role in the early 2000s, but it has not been a large factor across industries over the longer term. Overall, there is little evidence of a broad-based decline in the nation?s ability to compete in global markets.

Keywords: Competition; Exports; Productivity; Gross domestic product; International trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/current_issues/ci18-1.pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/rese ... t_issues/ci18-1.html (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fednci:y:2012:i:feb:n:v.18no.1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Current Issues in Economics and Finance from Federal Reserve Bank of New York Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gabriella Bucciarelli ().