Globalization and Deindustrialization in Advanced Countries

A strand of empirical research on deindustrialization seeks to quantify the relative importance of the economic forces behind deindustrialization, and especially of the internal and external factors, i.e. those linked to globalization and trade. The results of this literature are highly fragile, arguably because the commonly used indicators of trade are not well defined to capture the contribution of globalization to deindustrialization. While this empirical study does not necessarily contradict the widespread belief that the internal factors are quantitatively more important in accounting for deindustrialization in the OECD taken as a whole, our empirical results – based on panel data for 15 OECD advanced countries from 1970 to 2006 – nevertheless show that global exchanges have the potential to affect significantly and substantially a country’s sectoral patterns of employment. They also suggest that the contribution of globalization, and especially of growing North-South integration, to deindustrialization in advanced countries may be revised upwards when resorting to better-suited indicators of trade.