This paper documents the behaviour of trade prices during the Great Trade Collapse of 2008-2009 using transaction-level data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The authors' findings present a challenge for theories of the trade collapse based on cost shocks specific to traded goods that work through prices.

The sharp decline in trade values during the recent global recession has captured the attention of both policymakers and academics. This column presents recent research sowing that, within differentiated sectors, the great collapse was one of trade quantities and not one of trade prices.

At the height of the 2008–09 financial crisis, global trade fell by far more than global output – a pattern that defied past experience and became known as the Great Trade Collapse. This column uses a new model for analysis to argue that the collapse was caused mainly by the crash in global demand.

How have South Korean trade flows responded to the financial crisis of 2008-09? This column, part of a collection of four columns on trade responses to the crisis, finds that although relatively few antidumping duties were initiated, the Korea Trade Commission was more active in imposing these duties.

International trade flat-lined in the immediate aftermath of the global crisis, and many practitioners suggested that trade finance played an important role. Yet research has lagged behind policymaking, largely due to a lack of data detailing the financing of international transactions. This columns explores a US poultry exporter's trade-finance practices to pluck out some policy recommendations.

On the back of the global crisis came the global trade collapse, as international trade fell 15% between 2008 and 2009. Was this a result of credit lines being cut or did demand simply disappear? This column uses Peruvian export data to argue that bank credit played a smaller role than suggested by previous estimates.

The limited resort to protectionism during the financial crisis is often attributed to the WTO or to sensible macroeconomic policy. This column argues that there is more to the story. The combination of national laws, regional agreements, and powerful interest groups has worked to stop protectionism in its tracks.

Has the global crisis changed international trade forever? This column presents a Q&A on global trade taken from a new eBook from the European Central Bank: “Recovery and Beyond”.

The recent global crisis was accompanied by the Great Trade Collapse – the sharpest and deepest fall in world trade since the Second World War. While the subject has received much attention on this site, this column argues that scholars have not invested enough in comparing it to the previous world trade collapse of the 1930s. It does so, highlighting the importance of country-specific variables that have been neglected.

The great trade collapse during the global crisis has opened a new chapter in trade debate. This column uses evidence from a real-exchange-rate shock in Norway to show how firms initially slowed down or postponed the introduction of new products to the market. It argues that this sort of response suggests a long and difficult recovery from the global trade collapse – unless policymakers intervene.