The drivers of deindustrialization in advanced economies: a hierarchical structural decomposition analysis

Abstract

The participation of manufacturing in the GVA of many advanced economies is continuously decreasing. The purpose of this work is to contribute to the dialogue around the drivers of such trend. In order to do so, we use input-output analysis for decomposing the variation in the manufacturing share as the sum of the effects of the variation of various possible drivers of deindustrialization: prices, domestic demand, technology and external trade; and we calculate these effects through a dynamic-hierarchical structural decomposition analysis. As a result of the analysis, we identify certain regularities: (a) variations in prices and domestic demand are the two most important factors explaining deindustrialization; (b) a process of substituting domestic production by imports also contributes to deindustrialization; (c) exports make a positive contribution to the participation of manufactures in the GVA but, after the 2008 crisis, this contribution does not offset the negative contribution of substitution by imports.