Sources of change in U.S. manufactured exports during the eighties

Bowen and Pelzman (1984) used a Constant Market Share model to analyze the performance of the U.S. in manufactured exports over the years 1962 to 1977. Their findings indicated continued erosion of U.S. competitiveness in the world market. During the eighties, the U.S. performance in exporting manufactured goods has been dismal and has raised concern about the nation's ability to compete in the world market. In this paper, we present estimates of the CMS components of the export growth of the U.S. for the years 1979 to 1987. We find that the decline in export competitiveness reported by Bowen and Pelzman (1984) has continued and worsened during the eighties. Bowen and Pelzman (1984) reported the world-trade effect to be the major positive source of growth and the competitive effect to be the major retarding factor of growth. We find that in addition to the poor competitive effect during the eighties, the United States traded in sluggish export markets and within an environment of volatile growth of exports and demand in the industrialized world.