The deindustrialisation/tertiarisation hypothesis reconsidered: a subsystem application to the OECD7

Sandro Montresor () and Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2011, vol. 35, issue 2, 401-421

Abstract: The diffusion of outsourcing and vertical foreign direct investment (FDI) among manufacturing firms, along with the vertical integration of market services into manufacturing, is questioning the so called 'Deindustrialisation/Tertiarisation' (DT) hypothesis. In particular, it has been argued that DT might be an 'apparent' phenomenon, in fact amounting to a simple reorganisation of production across national and sectoral boundaries. The empirical studies that try to support this hypothesis, however, cannot be deemed conclusive as they suffer two methodological drawbacks: a non-(sub-)systemic sectoral level of analysis and a not truly global empirical approach. In order to overcome these drawbacks, the paper carries out an investigation of the actual extent to which DT occurred in the OECD area over the 1980s and the 1990s with two modifications: a sector instead of a subsystem perspective, retaining both direct and indirect relations and a 'pseudo-world' of seven OECD countries, thus taking into account the 'global' dimension of the phenomenon. Our results strongly support the DT hypothesis: although the weight of market services in the manufacturing subsystem increases, providing a counterbalance to manufacturing decline, subsystem shares significantly decrease, thus confirming DT as a more fundamental trend of the investigated period. Copyright The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/beq009 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The deindustrialisation/tertiarisation hypothesis reconsidered: a subsystem application to the OECD7 (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:cambje:v:35:y:2011:i:2:p:401-421

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().