In the past half century, the developing countries have experienced major compositional shifts from exports of primary products (including agricultural and raw materials) to exports of manufactures

Question

How might you explain this in terms of broad historical developments during this period?

Answer 1

Any discussion of the export experience of the developing countries must first clarify the problem of definitional inclusion. In particular, the exports of the (non-OECD) developing countries, has become increasingly dominated by the experience of a relatively small number of countries in South-East Asia, termed the New Industrialized Countries (NICs). Since they experienced both very rapid increases in their exports, and very rapid increases in the manufactured component of their exports, their experience alone may explain the bulk of the observed phenomenon. Many would exclude the NICs from the developing country category so as to be able to focus the discussion on a more representative sample of (the over 100 ) developing countries. More recently, a second wave of East Asian countries, notably including China have replicated the experience of the NICs, and this again muddies the water for one interested in focusing on the export experience of the increasingly heterogeneous category, developing countries. Another explanation of the growing dependence on manufactured exports on the part of the developing countries is the following: Since the consumer ( including industrial consumer) markets in OECD countries were rapidly shifting away from primary products, these markets were rapidly disappearing.

In addition, the world market for primary products was generally limited by low price and especially income elasticities; agricultural sectors tended to be highly and rigidly protected in potential OECD markets; and escalating effective tariff structures levied systematically large levels of protection against the primary exports of the developing countries; export success had to be pursued outside of the traditional primary exports of these countries.