Trade, global outsourcing and (de)industrialisation, 1995−2019 Volume I: Stylised facts and employment dynamics

This volume is the first part of a two−volumes background paper prepared from the perspective of a wider research project on deindustrialisation. It aims at contributing to the empirical analysis of manufacturing industries in the course of economic maturing, searching for the salient features that accompanied the most recent wave of globali-sation. In particular, we search for tipping points in industrial output and employment, with a special attention to the role of trade and outsourcing in an international context. In addition, we contribute also to the literature on truncated industrialisation and premature deindustrialisation in developing countries. Our findings highlight three stylised facts: deindustrialisation is structural but uneven across regions; its gendered impacts are significant; and outsourcing alters the composition of industrial output and labour without halting their overall relative decline. Heterogeneity dominates at regional level; the process is global in its drivers yet local in its manifestations. An implication of the “global village” created by hyper−globalisation is that, for many aspects except employment, the industrial economy functions like a world–wide closed economy. With two implications in terms of deindustrialisation: creative destruction may not happen anymore in the same national territory; the old issue of effective demand may return as a limiting factor, squeezed as it is between amazing productivity improvement and a demand for manufactured goods that remains largely constrained. This volume identifies stylised facts and patterns at aggregate and sectoral production and employment levels; it is completed by a second volume that looks inside the pro-duction process itself and its sub–systems.