The Changing Trade and Revealed Comparative Advantages of Asian and Latin American Manufacture Exports
Changes in comparative advantage should reflect changes in factor endowment, but increasingly, changes in trade policies also affect a region's trade performance. Based on the arguments in Balassa's stages of comparative advantage thesis, this paper looks at the performance of manufacture exports in a number of Asian and Latin American economies over the period 1981-1997 and examines the revealed comparative advantage indices between economies in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Although the RCA measurement may not distinguish between the factor endowment effects from the trade policy effect, we argue that RCA measures provide indication on the movement in a region's comparative advantage. The evidence strongly suggests that despite the strong export performance experienced by East Asian economies, they are losing their comparative advantage to the lower-tier economies in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
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| Length: | 24 pages |
| Date of creation: | Mar 2002 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:egc:wpaper:843 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Phone: (203) 432-3610 Fax: (203) 432-3898 Web page: http://www.econ.yale.edu/ More information through EDIRC
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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Balassa, Bela, 1979. "The Changing Pattern of Comparative Advantage in Manufactured Goods," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 61(2), pages 259-66, May.
- Jeffrey J. Schott, 1994. "Uruguay Round: An Assessment," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 64, May.
- Carolan, Terrie & Singh, Nirvikar & Talati, Cyrus, 1998. "The composition of U.S.-East Asia trade and changing comparative advantage," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 361-389.
- Balassa, Bela, 1986. "Comparative Advantage in Manufactured Goods: A Reappraisal," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(2), pages 315-19, May.
- Amable, Bruno, 2000. "International specialisation and growth," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 413-431, December.
- Young Lee, 1986. "Changing export patterns in Korea, Taiwan and Japan," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 150-163, March.
- Thomas Vollrath, 1991. "A theoretical evaluation of alternative trade intensity measures of revealed comparative advantage," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer, vol. 127(2), pages 265-280, June.
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