IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/wisagr/524.html

Prospects for Skills-Based Export Growth in a Labour-Abundant, Resource-Rich Economy: Indonesia in Comparative Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Coxhead, Ian

    (U of Wisconsin and Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

  • Li, Muqun

    (U of Wisconsin)

Abstract

In an integrated global economy, specialisation in trade is an increasingly prominent strategy. A labour-abundant, resource-rich economy like Indonesia faces stiff competition for labourintensive manufactures; meanwhile, rapid growth in demand for resources from China and India exposes it to the 'curse' of resource wealth. This diminishes prospects for more diversified growth based on renewable resources like human capital. Using an international panel data set we explore the influence of resource wealth, foreign direct investment, and human capital on the share of skill-intensive products in total exports. FDI and human capital increase this share; resource wealth diminishes it. We use the results to compare Indonesia with Thailand and Malaysia. Indonesia's reliance on skill-intensive exports would have been higher had it achieved higher levels of FDI and skills. Indonesia's performance in accumulating these endowments, and its relative resource abundance, impede diversification in production and trade. Finally, we discuss policy lessons and options.

Suggested Citation

  • Coxhead, Ian & Li, Muqun, 2008. "Prospects for Skills-Based Export Growth in a Labour-Abundant, Resource-Rich Economy: Indonesia in Comparative Perspective," Staff Paper Series 524, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:wisagr:524
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aae.wisc.edu/pubs/sps/pdf/stpap524.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Coxhead, Ian & Jayasuriya, Sisira, 2008. "The Rise of China and India and the Commodity Boom: Economic and Environmental Implications for Low-Income Countries," Staff Paper Series 528, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    2. Ian Coxhead & Sisira Jayasuriya, 2010. "China, India and the Commodity Boom: Economic and Environmental Implications for Low‐income Countries," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 525-551, April.
    3. Tingting Zheng & Zongxuan Chai & Pengfei Zuo & Xinyu Wang, 2024. "The Effect of Multilateral Economic Cooperation on Sustainable Natural Resource Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-25, August.
    4. Ibrahim Ayoade Adekunle & Adewale Rafiu Aregbeshola, 2025. "Evaluating the agricultural policy-productivity gap in Nigeria: a Markov-switching analysis," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Athukorala, Prema-chandra & Yamashita, Nobuaki, 2006. "Production fragmentation and trade integration: East Asia in a global context," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 233-256, December.
    6. Berly Martawardaya & Muhammad Fadli Hanafi, . "Don't Put All Eggs in One Basket: Subnational Resource Curse and The Need for Economic Diversification in Indonesia 2003-2016," INDEF Working Papers, Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF), number 012020, January-J.
    7. Muqun Li & Ian Coxhead, 2011. "Trade and Inequality with Limited Labor Mobility: Theory and Evidence from China," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(1), pages 48-65, February.
    8. Liang, Huijun & Shi, Changkuan & Abid, Nabila & Yu, Yanliang, 2023. "Are digitalization and human development discarding the resource curse in emerging economies?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PB).
    9. Ian Coxhead & Rashesh Shrestha, 2016. "Could a Resource Export Boom Reduce Workers’ Earnings? The Labour-Market Channel in Indonesia," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(2), pages 185-208, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:wisagr:524. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dauwius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.