The Structural Determinants of the U.S. Competitiveness in the Last Decades: a 'Trade-revealing' Analysis.

We analyze the decline in the U.S. share of world merchandise exports against the
backdrop of a model-based measure of competitiveness. We preliminarily use constant
market share analysis and gravity estimations to show that the majority of the decline
in export shares can be associated with a declining share of world income, suggesting
that the dismal performance of the U.S. market share is not a sucient statistic for
competitiveness. We then derive a computable measure of country-sector specic real
marginal costs (i.e. competitiveness) which, insofar it is inferred from actual trade
ows,
is referred to as 'revealed'. Brought to the data, this measure reveals that most U.S.
manufacturing industries are losing momentum relative to their main competitors, as we
nd U.S. revealed marginal costs to grow by more than 38% on average. At the sectoral
level, the "Machinery" industry is the most critical.