The Revealed Competitiveness of U.S. Exports

Abstract

The U.S. share of world merchandise exports has declined sharply over the last decade. Using data at the level of detailed industries, this paper analyzes the decline in U.S. share against the backdrop of alternative measures of the competitiveness of the U.S. economy. We document the following facts: (i) only a few industries contributed to the decline in any meaningful way, (ii) a large part of the drop was driven by the changing size of U.S. export industries and not the size of U.S. sales within those industries, (iii) in a gravity framework, the majority of the decline in the U.S. export share within industries was due to the declining U.S. share of world income, and (iv) in a computed structural measure of firm productivity, average U.S. export productivity has generally maintained its high level versus other countries over time. Overall, our analysis suggests that the dismal performance of the U.S. market share is not a sufficient statistic for competitiveness.

Competitiveness Measurement in Terms of the Europe 2020 Strategy

“…Most authors emphasize the importance of innovation for the development of competitiveness and performance in exporting, as demonstrated with results in various countries and with groups of products (Wierzbicka, 2018;Cheba & Szopik-Depczyńska, 2017;Zygmunt, 2017;Gatto et al, 2011;Jarreau & Poncet, 2012;Kaimakoudi et al, 2014; Nachum et al, 2001;Sandu & Ciocanel, 2014;Silgoner et al, 2015; Tomáš, 2011; Xiong & Qureshi, 2013;Xu, 2010;Chernova et al, 2017;Ussahawanitchakit, 2017;Kiseľáková et al, 2018;Ivanová & Čepel, 2018). Further analyses have focused on the importance of research and development and their effect on the competitiveness and performance of exporting (Gittleman & Wolff, 1995;Lefebvre & Bourgault, 1998;Di Mauro et al, 2005;Priede & Pereira, 2013;Sandu & Ciocanel, 2014;Smith, 2002;Meyer & Meyer, 2016;Androniceanu, 2017a).…”