Research Back

Are Production Networks Passé in East Asia? Not Yet

Trade, Production Networks, industry and manufacturing

Are Production Networks Passé in East Asia? Not Yet

Many people have a vague notion that the room for expanding international production networks is almost exhausted and that this is why international trade has slowed down since the recovery from the great trade collapse. This paper presents evidence against such belief in the East Asian context by classifying finely disaggregated international trade data into five categories based on the stages of the production process. Our thorough data examinations show that the slowdown in world trade and East Asian trade was attributed mainly to sluggish growth in trade of primary goods and processed raw materials. In contrast, East Asian trade in manufactured parts and components and the assembled end products within international production networks mostly seen in machinery industries, continued to expand steadily, underpinned by the intensive margin growth. We argue that East Asian production networks did not slow down and the potentiality of the production networks has not been exhausted yet.

ERIA-DP-2018-03

Date

13 June 2018

Category

Industry and Manufacturing , Trade

Author

Ayako Obashi, Fukunari Kimura

Share this article:

Related Articles

Production Networks in Southeast Asia

Production Networks in Southeast Asia

23 February 2017

global value chains, Trade, Labour and Migration, industry and manufacturing, Routledge

The book answers the recently topical questions of how China's processed trade affects the trade of Southeast Asia. What is Southeast Asia's role in Factory …

Productivity Evolution of Chinese Large and Small Firms in the Era of Globalisation

Productivity Evolution of Chinese Large and Small Firms in the Era of Globalisation

20 May 2014

Abstract Using a large firm-level dataset from the Chinese manufacturing industry, this paper studies the productivity gap and productivity convergence between large and small firms …

CHOOSE FILTER
Loading Loading