Structural Change in an Interdependent World: A Global View of Manufacturing Decline

This paper presents a simple model of the world economy, in which productivity gains in manufacturing are responsible for the global trend of manufacturing decline, and yet, in a cross-section of countries, faster productivity gains in manufacturing do not necessarily imply faster declines in manufacturing. In doing so, it aims to draw attention to the common pitfall of using the cross-country evidence to test a closed economy model, and argues for a global perspective; in order to understand cross-country patterns of structural change, one needs a world economy model in which the interdependence across countries is explicitly spelled out. (JEL: F43, O11, O14, O19) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.