Trade Policy Reform and the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Industry, Australia: 1993-97

Kankesu Jayanthakumaran

No WP99-18, Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Abstract: Textiles, clothing and footwear (TCF) industries in Australia experienced extensive trade reforms in the 1990s, which were expected to promote a competitive TCF activities. This paper examines two hypotheses (1) trade reforms have had a positive impact on TCF industries and (2) trade reforms have had an adverse impact on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Selected growth performance variables were intensively analysed. The results of the study are consistent with hypothesis (1) but are inconclusive with hypothesis (2). It was found that the positive productivity effect of SMEs does not appear to have been translated into export gain. The needs for further research to identify and focus upon the barriers inhibiting the export performance of SMEs is suggested.

Keywords: trade reforms; manufacturing performance; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 1999
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@ ... ts/doc/uow012265.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:uow:depec1:wp99-18

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia School of Economics, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Siminski ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).