Search

We assemble a large database of countries' manufacturing employment and output shares for 1970–2010. We ask whether increased global competition and labor-displacing technological change have made it more difficult for countries to industrialize in employment, and whether there are alternative routes to prosperity. We find that: (1) All of today's rich non-oil economies enjoyed at least 18% manufacturing employment shares in the past; (2) They often did so before becoming rich; (3) Manufacturing peaks at lower employment shares today (typically below 18%), than in the past (often over 30%); (4) Compared with employment, output shares are weak predictors of prosperity, and are under less pressure; and (5) Late developers' manufacturing employment shares peak at much lower per capita incomes than previous studies have shown. We demonstrate that final result through analysis and simulation of the dynamics implied by our regression model. Becoming rich through industrialization has therefore become much more difficult. We argue that this is in large part because of rapid growth in the manufacturing capabilities of some very populous countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strand of empirical research on deindustrialization seeks to quantify the relative importance of the economic forces behind deindustrialization, and especially of the internal and external factors, i.e. those linked to globalization and trade. The results of this literature are highly fragile, arguably because the commonly used indicators of trade are not well defined to capture the contribution of globalization to deindustrialization. While this empirical study does not necessarily contradict the widespread belief that the internal factors are quantitatively more important in accounting for deindustrialization in the OECD taken as a whole, our empirical results – based on panel data for 15 OECD advanced countries from 1970 to 2006 – nevertheless show that global exchanges have the potential to affect significantly and substantially a country’s sectoral patterns of employment. They also suggest that the contribution of globalization, and especially of growing North-South integration, to deindustrialization in advanced countries may be revised upwards when resorting to better-suited indicators of trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism in Latin America. Neoliberalism and globalization had decisive influence in shaping public policies both internal and foreign in Latin America. Less state, trade and market freedoms, social goals subordinated to economic criteria, are part and parcel of the neoliberal utopia. Price stability was erected as the main social objective; import substitution resulted replaced by exports as the main source of growth. The neoliberal net results as applied to Latin America are: less growth, deindustrialization, income concentration and precarious employments. Therefore, countries public policies should try to gain autonomy to use jointly markets and public intervention in a constructive and innovative fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]