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Crisis-proof services

Ariu, Andrea, (2016), “Crisis-proof services”, VoxEU, 3 Οctober

Following the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, trade in goods experienced the steepest decline ever recorded, with both exports and imports dropping four times more than income (Freund 2009, Levchenko et al. 2010). The fall was severe, highly synchronised across countries, and mostly concentrated in the category of durable goods (Baldwin 2009). Surprisingly, trade in services was relatively unaffected by the shock. Business, telecommunication and financial services, which constitute more than half of trade in services in modern economies, continued growing at their pre-crisis rates and only the category of transport services declined (Borchert and Mattoo 2009). In a new paper, I provide evidence on the reaction of both goods and services exporters to the 2008-2009 crisis and I analyse the reasons behind the peculiar resilience of services trade (Ariu 2016).

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