Some aspects of the international distribution of industrial activity

This article examines some of the recent changes in the industrial structure at the international level. First, it attempts to determine the actual extent of relocation in order to establish whether this is an almost unfulfilled possibility or rather a process in full implementation. It goes on to describe various kinds of industrialization in developing countries and then raises the problem of the ‘industrial redeployment’ of the developed countries, considering the contradiction that exists between the current problem of unemployment and the probable labour shortage which could occur between 1985 and the year 2000, one solution to which could be industrial relocation (others would be an increase in productivity or an influx of foreign workers). The authors also consider the comparative advantages which may induce transnational corporations to establish themselves in developing countries, and they analyse in greater detail the question of wage differences as weighted by productivity. Finally, policy alternatives are proposed for developing countries, comparing the characteristics and effects of ‘open’ industrialization based on comparative advantages —which would fit in with the industrial ‘redeployment’ of the developed countries— with the characteristics and effects of a form of industrialization which tends to affirm national autonomy (as for example in the production of capital goods) and to supply the majority of the population

Developing country · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Industrialisation · Labour economics · Market economy · Population · Productivity · Relocation · Unemployment · Wage · Global trade and economics

• Toward a theory of the international division of industrial labor

  Open Access•Kimmo Kiljunen•World Development•1989

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