What is behind the decline in the elasticity of global trade to global GDP?
The elasticity of global trade in volume terms to global real GDP has fallen markedly over the past ten years (from 1.6 before the subprime crisis to 0.8 afterwards ) . What may have caused this? The end of offshoring, as the weight of imports from emerging countries in OECD countries' economies has stopped increasing; The transformation of economies towards service economies, as trade in services is far smaller than trade in industrial products; An increased preference for domestic products, which has led to a decline in the elasticity of imports to domestic demand (from 2.0 to 1.2). As a result, countries whose growth is heavily dependent on exports are in trouble, and economies in different regions decorrelate.