Publication: Trouble in the Making?: The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development
Loading...
Date
2017-09-20
ISSN
Published
2017-09-20
Editor(s)
Abstract
Globalization and new technologies are impacting the desirability and feasibility of what has historically been the most successful development strategy. Manufacturing has been seen as special, promising both productivity gains and job creation. But trade is slowing. Global value chains (GVC) are maturing. Robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and the Internet of things are shifting what makes locations attractive for production and threatening significant disruptions in employment. There is a risk of increased polarization, within countries and across countries. Shifting the attention from high-income countries, this report takes the perspective of developing countries to ask: -- If new technologies reduce the importance of low-wage labor, how can developing countries compete? -- Do countries need to industrialize to develop? -- How can countries at different levels of development take advantage of new opportunities? Development strategies need to broaden. Different manufacturing sub-sectors can still provide productivity growth or jobs; fewer can deliver both. Many of the pro-development characteristics traditionally associated with manufacturing--tradability, scale, innovation, learning-by-doing--are increasingly features of services. With faster diffusion of technology, it will be all the more important for countries to improve the enabling environment, remain open to trade, and support capabilities of firms and workers to ensure future prosperity is shared.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Hallward-Driemeier, Mary; Nayyar, Gaurav. 2017. Trouble in the Making?: The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27946 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Have Robots Grounded the Flying Geese? Evidence from Greenfield FDI in Manufacturing(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12)For decades, manufacturers around the world have outsourced production to countries with lower labor costs. However, there is a concern that robotization in high-income countries will challenge this shifting international division of labor known as the "flying geese" paradigm. Greenfield foreign direct investment decisions constitute a forward-looking indicator of where production is expected, rather than trade flows that reflect past investment decisions. Exploiting differences across countries and industries, the intensity of robot use in high-income countries has a positive impact on foreign direct investment growth from high-income countries to low- and middle-income countries over 2004-15. Past a threshold, however, increased robotization in high-income countries has a negative impact on foreign direct investment growth. Only 3 percent of the sample exceeds the threshold level beyond which further automation results in negative foreign direct investment growth and is consistent with re-shoring. For another 25 percent of the sample, the impact of robotization on the growth of foreign direct investment is positive, but at a rate that is declining. So, although these are early warning signs, automation in high-income countries has resulted in growing foreign direct investment for more than two-thirds of the sample under consideration. Some geese may be slowing, but for now, most continue to fly.Publication At Your Service?(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-09-15)Throughout history, industrialization has been synonymous with development. However, the trend of premature deindustrialization and the spread of automation technologies associated with Industry 4.0 has raised concerns that the development model based on export-led manufacturing seen in East Asia will be harder for hitherto less industrialized countries to replicate in the future. Can services-led development be an alternative? Contrary to conventional wisdom, the features of manufacturing that were considered uniquely conducive for productivity growth - such as international trade, scale economies, inter-sectoral linkages, and innovation - are increasingly shared by the services sector. But services are not monolithic. The twin gains of productivity growth and large-scale job creation for relatively low-skilled workers are less likely to come together in any given services subsector. The promise of services-led development in the future will be strengthened to the extent that technological change reduces the trade-off between productivity and jobs, and growth opportunities in services with potential for high productivity do not depend on a manufacturing base. Considering technological change and linkages between sectors while differentiating across types of services, this book assesses the scope of a services-driven development model and policy directions that maximize its potential.Publication Creative Destruction and Policy Reforms : Changing Productivity Effects of Firm Turnoverin Moroccan Manufacturing(2009-10-01)How important is firm turnover to national productivity growth? The literature points to the contribution of creative destruction being strongest in more developed countries or where market institutions are strongest. This paper looks at the case of Morocco, spanning 16 years, during which reform initiatives aiming to strengthen market forces were introduced. The paper argues that it is important to take into account i) the timing of how decompositions are structured (capturing the effects of high growth among young firms as part of the benefit of increased entry) and ii) the additional indirect impacts of firm dynamics on agglomeration externalities and competition. The paper shows there are striking differences in the productivity paths of entering and exiting firms compared with incumbents, and that restricting the time horizon of productivity decompositions to the actual year of entry or exit underestimates the productivity effects of turnover. Although it has been hypothesized that conducting decompositions over longer horizons would increase the positive contribution of net turnover, this is not the case in Morocco as losses from exiting firms rise too. Nor has the net contribution of turnover increased with market reforms; if anything, the contribution has declined over time. But the allocation of resources has improved. Both technical and allocative efficiency have risen since the mid-1990s. The paper also shows that firm turnover affects productivity through additional channels. It is closely correlated with measures of agglomeration that are associated with higher rates of exit among unproductive firms, and turnover itself is positively associated with subsequent productivity growth of incumbents.Publication Ladies First? Firm-level Evidence on the Labor Impacts of the East Asian Crisis(2011-09-01)In a crisis, do employers place the burden of adjustment disproportionately on female employees? Relying on household and labor force data, existing studies of the distributional impact of crises have not been able to address this question. This paper uses Indonesia's census of manufacturing firms to analyze employer responses and to identify mechanisms by which gender differences in impact may arise, notably differential treatment of men and women within firms as well as gender sorting across firms that varied in their exposure to the crisis. On average, women experienced higher job losses than their male colleagues within the same firm. However, the aggregate adverse effect of such differential treatment was more than offset by women being disproportionately employed in firms hit relatively less hard by the crisis. The 0 hypothesis that there were no gender differences in wage adjustment is not rejected. Analyzing how employer characteristics impact labor market adjustment patterns contributes to the understanding of who is vulnerable in volatile times.Publication Who Survives? The Impact of Corruption, Competition and Property Rights across Firms(2009-10-01)Size, age, sector, and productivity are commonly cited as factors determining a firm s survival. However, there are several dimensions of the investment climate in which the firm operates that affect whether it continues in business or exits. This paper uses new panel data from 27 Eastern European and Central Asian countries to test the importance of five areas of the business climate on firm exit: the efficiency of government services, access to finance, the extent of corruption or cronyism, the strength of property rights, and the degree of competition. The paper finds that weaknesses in these areas do affect the probability of firm exit largely in ways that undermine the Schumpeterian cleansing role of exit in raising overall productivity. Greater costs and regulatory burdens raise the probability that more productive firms exit, while less developed financial and legal institutions mitigate forces that would otherwise push less productive firms to exit. Thus, the more productive firms stand to gain the most from improvements in the investment climate, whether that is lowering transaction costs or improving market mechanisms. This holds both within countries and across countries. The impact of a particular investment climate measure can also differ significantly by type of firm, with the focus given to firm size. The differential impact on size can be significant at a size cutoff of 10 or more employees. As these are the firms that are near the threshold of many regulatory requirements, the implications are not just with regard to whether a firm remains in operation, but whether it does so in the formal sector.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Global Economic Prospects, June 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-10)The global economy is facing another substantial headwind, emanating largely from an increase in trade tensions and heightened global policy uncertainty. For emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), the ability to boost job creation and reduce extreme poverty has declined. Key downside risks include a further escalation of trade barriers and continued policy uncertainty. These challenges are exacerbated by subdued foreign direct investment into EMDEs. Global cooperation is needed to restore a more stable international trade environment and scale up support for vulnerable countries grappling with conflict, debt burdens, and climate change. Domestic policy action is also critical to contain inflation risks and strengthen fiscal resilience. To accelerate job creation and long-term growth, structural reforms must focus on raising institutional quality, attracting private investment, and strengthening human capital and labor markets. Countries in fragile and conflict situations face daunting development challenges that will require tailored domestic policy reforms and well-coordinated multilateral support.Publication World Development Report 2020(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020)Global value chains (GVCs) powered the surge of international trade after 1990 and now account for almost half of all trade. This shift enabled an unprecedented economic convergence: poor countries grew rapidly and began to catch up with richer countries. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, however, the growth of trade has been sluggish and the expansion of GVCs has stalled. Meanwhile, serious threats have emerged to the model of trade-led growth. New technologies could draw production closer to the consumer and reduce the demand for labor. And conflicts among large countries could lead to a retrenchment or a segmentation of GVCs. This book examines whether there is still a path to development through GVCs and trade. It concludes that technological change is, at this stage, more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms to promote GVC participation; industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies; and all countries revive multilateral cooperation.Publication Mobilizing Private Capital for the Sustainable Development Goals(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-12)This paper summarizes evidence on financial instruments and regulatory approaches to spur private investment in pursuit of the 2030 Sustainable Developments Goals. Starting from a theoretical framework demonstrating that raising the marginal product of capital is the key to crowding in private investment, it uses Robert Merton’s functional approach to financial intermediation to assess the track record and prospects for five types of instruments/regulatory approaches: guarantees, public-private partnerships, syndicated loans, sustainable financial contracts, and climate and banking regulations and policies. Despite considerable gains in the amount of private investment mobilized by these vehicles, the volumes still fall short of the trillions of dollars estimated to be necessary to achieve the Sustainable Developments Goals. Efforts to share relevant data, encourage more academic research, and publicize and demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches, much of which is already being undertaken by the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, could be crucial to scale up private capital mobilization.Publication The Container Port Performance Index 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-18)The Container Port Performance Index (CPPI) measures the time container ships spend in port, making it an important point of reference for stakeholders in the global economy. These stakeholders include port authorities and operators, national governments, supranational organizations, development agencies, and other public and private players in trade and logistics. The index highlights where vessel time in container ports could be improved. Streamlining these processes would benefit all parties involved, including shipping lines, national governments, and consumers. This fourth edition of the CPPI relies on data from 405 container ports with at least 24 container ship port calls in the calendar year 2023. As in earlier editions of the CPPI, the ranking employs two different methodological approaches: an administrative (technical) approach and a statistical approach (using matrix factorization). Combining these two approaches ensures that the overall ranking of container ports reflects actual port performance as closely as possible while also being statistically robust. The CPPI methodology assesses the sequential steps of a container ship port call. ‘Total port hours’ refers to the total time elapsed from the moment a ship arrives at the port until the vessel leaves the berth after completing its cargo operations. The CPPI uses time as an indicator because time is very important to shipping lines, ports, and the entire logistics chain. However, time, as captured by the CPPI, is not the only way to measure port efficiency, so it does not tell the entire story of a port’s performance. Factors that can influence the time vessels spend in ports can be location-specific and under the port’s control (endogenous) or external and beyond the control of the port (exogenous). The CPPI measures time spent in container ports, strictly based on quantitative data only, which do not reveal the underlying factors or root causes of extended port times. A detailed port-specific diagnostic would be required to assess the contribution of underlying factors to the time a vessel spends in port. A very low ranking or a significant change in ranking may warrant special attention, for which the World Bank generally recommends a detailed diagnostic.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.