EU industrial structure - EU Bookshop - Europa

The previous figures imply that there is a great deal of variety
in growth and cyclical behaviour across the manufacturing
industries. The industries are therefore compared using
measures of the cyclical fluctuation and monthly growth
rates in constant prices between 1990 and January 2011. The
effect of the financial crisis in terms of production loss is also
compared across manufacturing industries in the table below.
The columns below the heading ‘cycle’ present the
maximum, minimum and the cyclical intensity of the
cycle components for each industry. Cyclical fluctuations
are measured as deviations of actual output from
trend output. 15 The cycle fluctuation for each industry
is compared to the total manufacturing industry by
dividing the standard deviation for each industry’s
cyclical component with the standard deviation for the
total manufacturing industry’s cyclical component. 16
A cyclical intensity around 1.0 indicates that an industry
faces the same cyclical fluctuations as the aggregate
manufacturing.
15 The gaps and trend output are estimated with the
Christiano-Fitzgerald band-pass filter, see Christiano, L. J. and
Fitzgerald, T. J. (1996).
16 It should be noted that the calculations of the cyclical fluctuations
are subject to uncertainty. The uncertainty stems from the fact
that trend (or potential) output is not observable and has to be
estimated by some method. Thus, cyclical fluctuations, which are
measured as deviations of trend output from actual output, are
also uncertain.
Chapter I — The aftermath of the crisis — a long and uneven recovery(?)
FIgURE I.7: Percentage of manufacturing industries with very low growth rates in 1991-2011
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1991
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Source: own calculations using Eurostat data.
Industries producing repair of machinery, motor vehicles,
electrical equipment, machinery n.e.c. and computers,
electronic and optical products are subject to larger cyclical
fluctuations than other industries. On the lower range of
the scale are industries which produce goods which are
less sensitive to fluctuations in income, and hence are less
sensitive to fluctuations in demand. These industries consist
of enterprises producing necessity goods such as the food
and beverage industries and also pharmaceutical industries.
The columns below the heading ‘growth’ present the
maximum, minimum and average twelve month growth
rates. The growth rates are calculated as the monthly
growth rates relative to the same month of the previous
years. The pharmaceutical industry displays average growth
rates which are significantly higher than any other. Also,
the industry producing electronic and optical products has
relatively high average growth rates. The lowest average
growth rates are found in industries producing textiles,
leather and footwear, tobacco and clothing.
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