Johnson, Robert Christopher; Bems, Rudolfs; Yi, Kei-Mu - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2012
We survey recent literature on the causes of the collapse in international trade during the 2008-2009 global recession …. We argue that the evidence points to the collapse in aggregate expenditure, concentrated on trade-intensive durable goods …, as the main driver of the trade collapse. Inventory adjustment likely amplified the impact of these expenditure changes …