Towards a New Taxonomy of Manufacturing Countries

The scope of this paper is to propose a novel approach to the categorization of manufacturing development, aimed at accounting for the major global transformations that have occurred in the organisation of industrial activity in the last decades. It first addresses the way manufacturing development can be defined in order to provide a measure of the degree of industrialization of different countries, and then suggests a new taxonomy accordingly. Attention is paid to the fact that in the course of time countries can—and usually do—move from one group of manufacturers to another. Moreover, it is shown that cross-country differences in the degree of industrialisation are also mirrored by differences in their institutional features. Results offer some important lessons for industrial policy.