STRUCTURAL SHIFTS IN THE MANUFACTURING EXPORT PERFORMANCE OF OECD ECONOMIES

This paper identifies structural shifts in manufacturing export perfor mance of the major OECD economics. The particular emphasis of this stu dy is to see whether the longer-run responses of a country's exports t o the growth in world demand have undergone trend changes. The econome tric work focuses on the time variation in income elasticities from an export demand model over the period 1963-89. It thus covers a period in which there was a substantial slow-down in world economic growth an d in which the manufacturing sectors in advanced economies underwent s ubstantial restructuring in the wake of the two oil-price shocks and t he competitive challenges of Japan and the NICs. The exercise attempte d to evaluate the relative successes and failures of the different OEC D economies to maintain or improve their positions in the 'higher qual ity' (income elastic) segments of world trade. Evidence was found for trend improvements in the income elasticity for UK exports from the ea rly 1980s onwards and a trend decline for that of the US over the same period. The effects of non-tariff protection against Japanese exports also showed up in our results and an attempt was made to separately i dentify its effects.