Explaining the Slowdown in Global Trade 解释全球贸易放缓.pdfVIP

Explaining the Slowdown in Global Trade Jarkko Jääskelä and Thomas Mathews* Following the global financial crisis, global trade contracted sharply and, after an initial recovery, grew at an unusually slow pace relative to global GDP. This article reviews cyclical and structural explanations for this phenomenon, and finds econometric evidence that cyclical factors – namely shifts in the composition of aggregate demand toward less import-intensive components and heightened economic uncertainty – can explain most of the slowdown in trade in a panel of advanced economies. Although the slowdown in aggregate global trade is well explained by the model used, the results vary by country. For Australia, the model performed well until 2012, after which it over-predicted import growth, most likely because it did not adequately capture the import intensity of mining investment and resource exports. Introduction Graph 1 Global Trade* Before the global financial crisis, international trade Per cent of global GDP % % had been growing at about 1½ times the rate of global GDP for around four decades, resulting in a 30 30 substantial increase in the global trade-to-GDP ratio (Graph  1). The increase in trade over this period is 25 25 widely attributed to structural factors, including substantial declines in the cost