Title: Steel market and global trends of leading geo-economic players

Authors: Mario Coccia

Addresses: National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Economic Research on Firm and Growth (CERIS-CNR), Collegio Carlo Alberto - Via Real Collegio, n. 30 - 10024 Moncalieri (Torino), Italy; Munk School of Global Affairs, The Munk Centre for International Studies at Trinity College, University of Toronto, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON M5S 3K7, Canada

Abstract: The aim of this study is twofold: (a) to report a flow analysis based on trends of steel across some leading geo-economic players; (b) to analyse the long-term relationship between steel consumption and economic growth by the sensitivity of the demand of steel consumption to a change in the national income. Results show that China (CHN) and Italy (ITA) have higher average annual growth of the production of crude steel (CHN 9.75%; ITA 0.83%), steel crude use equivalent (CHN 8.37%; ITA 1.95%) and steel use finished products (CHN 9.38%; ITA 1.65%), whereas the USA have higher average annual growth of imports (13.23%) and China has higher exports of semi-finished/finished steel products (20.38%). The estimated average elasticity of the consumption of steel on national income per countries, based on unidirectional causality that runs from national income to steel consumption, shows de facto positive values, except in UK economy.

Keywords: steel consumption; steel production; global trends; steel markets; competitive performance; economic growth; industrial dynamics; comparative analysis; time series; steel industry; national income; China; Italy; USA; United States; UK; United Kingdom.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTGM.2014.058714

International Journal of Trade and Global Markets, 2014 Vol.7 No.1, pp.36 - 52

Received: 21 Jul 2012
Accepted: 15 Jan 2013
Published online: 29 Oct 2014 *

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