“The Great Trade Collapse: Causes, Consequences and Prospects” is now available free for download. A new VoxEU.org ebook aims to inform the world trade ministers what the economists know about the trade collapse.
Book Description
World trade experienced a sudden, severe, and synchronised collapse in late 2008 – the sharpest in recorded history and deepest since WWII. This ebook – written for the world’s trade ministers gathering for the WTO’s Trade Ministerial in Geneva – presents the economics profession’s received wisdom on the collapse. Two dozen chapters, written by leading economists from across the globe, summarise the latest research on the causes of the collapse as well as its consequences and the prospects for recovery. According to the emerging consensus, the collapse was caused by the sudden, severe and globally synchronised postponement of purchases, especially of durable consumer and investment goods (and their parts and components). The impact was amplified by “compositional” and “synchronicity” effects in which international supply chains played a central role.
Contents
- Introduction: The great trade collapse: what caused it and what does it mean?
- The dollar and the budget deficit
- Prospects for the global trading system
- Global trade in the aftermath of the global crisis
- Government policies and the collapse in trade during the Great Depression
- Crisis-era protectionism one year after the Washington G20 meeting
- The great trade collapse and trade imbalances
- The trade response to global downturns
- The collapse of US trade: in search of the smoking gun
- The collapse of global trade: update on the role of vertical linkages
- Follow the bouncing ball – trade and the great recession redux
- Resilient to the crisis? Global supply chains and trade flows
- The Great Synchronisation: tracking the trade collapse with high-frequency data
- Banking crises and exports: lessons from the past for the recent trade collapse
- Did trade credit problems deepen the great trade collapse?
- US trade margins during the 2008 crisis
- French exporters and the global crisis
- Services trade – the collapse that wasn’t
- The role of trade costs in the great trade collapse
- Transmission of the global recession through US trade
- Africa and the trade crisis
- Africa, the trade crisis and WTO negotiations
- Trade collapse and international supply chains: Japanese evidence
- Why was Japan’s trade hit so much harder?
- The Great Recession and India’s trade collapse
- Mexico and the great trade collapse
Book Details