The Nature of Industrial Development and the Speed of Structural Change

Abstract

The paper discusses the relationship between industrial development and structural change in the Age of globalization. It sets within the same theoretical framework the fact that both the sectoral concentration of manufacturing activities and the internal structure of the whole economy do change in the course of industrial development, and shows that the speed of such transformations depends upon the time at which industrial development has taken place. In particular, for late industrializing countries the intra- and inter-sectoral structural adjustments have been significantly faster as compared to those experienced by nations that built their manufacturing base in earlier times. These results have strong implications for the current debate on early deindustrialization.