International Trade and Structural Change

NOTE: The following is a description of the paper and not the actual abstract. The decades following the Second World War have been distinguished by an unprecedented movement toward openness among the world's economies. This study examines the resultant changes in the trade volumes of nearly 50 countries over the past four and a half decades. Using sequential trend break tests, it determines the timing and significance of structural breaks in the time paths of each country's export and import shares of output between 1948 and 1993. Roughly 80% of the countries are found to exhibit a significant structural break in their trade-output ratios. All but one of these breaks came on or after 1968 the year that the Kennedy Round agreement of the GATT - commonly considered the largest comprehensive global attempt at reducing formal trade barriers - came into effect. In the vast majority of instances, the breaks were followed by greater trade flows. Interestingly enough, import trend breaks are not overwhelmingly related to export trend breaks. While the most frequent break year for imports was 1973, the year of the first major oil embargo, this was not a particularly common year for exports. Furthermore, the extent of the increase in imports did not exhibit a particularly strong relationship with the extent of increase in exports