DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE BLANCE OF PAYMENTS IN ADVANCED ECONOMIES

Robert Rowthorn and Kenneth Coutts ()

No 170, UNCTAD Discussion Papers from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Abstract: This paper defines de-industrialization as a secular decline in the share of manufacturing in national employment. De-industrialization, in this sense, has been a universal feature of economic growth in advanced economies in recent decades. The paper considers briefly what explains this development and quantifies some of the factors responsible. It then examines the experience of the United Kingdom and the United States, which are two countries that have combined rapid de-industrialization with a strong overall economic performance. The paper considers both the domestic situation of manufacturing industry in these countries and its foreign trade performance, and examines in detail the United Kingdom’s balance of payments, and documenting how improvements in the non-manufacturing sphere have helped offset a worsening performance in manufacturing trade. It concludes that manufacturing still matters to economic performance even at the highest levels of economic development, and that “premature de-industrialization” could lead to serious mismanagement of the integration of developing countries into the global economy.

Date: 2004
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pke
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Journal Article: De-industrialisation and the balance of payments in advanced economies (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unc:dispap:170

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