In the Wake of the Global Crisis : Evidence from a New Quarterly Database of Export Competitiveness
Over the past two decades, international trade has become a privileged engine of growth for much of the developing world. With the global economy evolving continuously and rapidly, countries must pay close attention to their positioning on the map...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/12/18717274/wake-global-crisis-evidence-new-quarterly-database-export-competitiveness http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16815 |
| Summary: | Over the past two decades, international
trade has become a privileged engine of growth for much of
the developing world. With the global economy evolving
continuously and rapidly, countries must pay close attention
to their positioning on the map of global trade and
production. Within this framework, countries must also
become aware of how they fare relative to competitors and to
their past export performance. Of particular importance is
the extent to which their performance is driven by exporter
own supply-side capacity as opposed to external or
compositional factors, including product and geographical
specialization and how these trends compare across
countries. This paper describes a new initiative that uses
quarterly data for 2005q1-2013q1 to compute comparable
indicators of export performance for 228 countries and
territories. The database, the Export Competitiveness
Database, reveals interesting patterns in trade performance.
Export performance, stripped of compositional effects, was
strongest for countries from the Asia and Pacific region, on
average. Moreover, such performance was almost entirely
driven by exporting country specific factors, with changes
reflecting growth in volume rather than price developments.
All emerging and developing regions have, on average,
improved export performance. The indicators in the database
trace the legacy of supply-side capacity and the overall
export performance of the double-dip recession in the euro
area. An illustrative set of results suggests that the
paper's measure of competitiveness correlates to a
country's nominal and real effective exchange rate,
factors that are commonly perceived as important
determinants of competitiveness. |
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