Structural shifts in the manufacturing export performance of OECD economies

This paper identifies structural shifts in manufacturing export performance of the major OECD economies. The particular emphasis of this study is to see whether the longer-run responses of a country's exports to the growth in world demand have undergone trend changes. The econometric 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 and in which the manufacturing sectors in advanced economies underwent substantial restructuring in the wake of the two oil-price shocks and the competitive challenges of Japan and the NICs. The exercise attempted to evaluate the relative successes and failures of the different OECD economies to maintain or improve their positions in the `higher quality' (income elastic) segments of world trade. Evidence was found for trend improvements in the income elasticity for UK exports from the early 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 identify its effects.