Steel market and global trends of leading geo-economic players

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 semifinished/ 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.