The Slowdown in Global Trade: A Symptom of A Weak Recovery

Aqib Aslam, Emine Boz, Eugenio Cerutti, Marcos Poplawski Ribeiro and Petia Topalova
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro

No 2017/242, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Global trade growth has slowed since 2012 relative both to its strong historical performance and to overall economic growth. This paper aims to quantify the role of weak economic growth and changes in its decomposition in accounting for the slowdown in trade using a reduced form and a structural approach. Both analytical investigations suggest that the overall weakness in economic activity, particularly investment, has been the primary restraint on trade growth, accounting for over 80 percent of the decline in the growth of the volume of goods trade between 2012–16 and 2003–07. However, other factors are also weighing on trade in recent years, especially in emerging market and developing economies, as evidenced by the non-negligible role attributed to trade costs by the structural approach.

Keywords: WP; import growth; demand; import-intensity-adjusted demand; International Trade; Globalization; Trade Policy; Investment; trade cost; import demand model; world goods trade volume growth; trade growth; import share; trade slowdown; Imports; Real imports; Exports; Emerging and frontier financial markets; Trade balance; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2017-11-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=45352 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Slowdown in Global Trade: A Symptom of a Weak Recovery? (2018)
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:imf:imfwpa:2017/242

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().