ABSTRACT

This paper decomposes manufacturing import growth rates in a selected set of large industrial and developing countries (five industrial and eight developing) and measures the relative contributions of domestic demand and market share changes for two separate periods 1991/92-2001/02 and 2001/02-2007/08. It also shows the shares of imports both from the rest of the world and from developing countries for aggregate and three digit manufacturing sectors. Import growth is much higher during the 2000s driven by higher demand growth rates. While market share changes explain most of the growth during the 1990s, its contribution is relatively smaller during the 2000s. Imports from developing countries have grown much faster both in industrial and developing country markets driven primarily by market share changes. However, more than half of market share gains by developing countries are caused by the exports of China which accounts for more than 70 percent of market share gains of developing countries in our sample countries during the 2000s. Despite rapid growth, developing country’s share in the gross absorption of the sample countries is still very low and can expand substantially even if demand growth is much lower in the near future.

1. Introduction

Within the last few decades, global manufactured goods trade has grown very fast. This growth has been driven both by liberalization of trade regimes across the globe and high demand growth rates especially among developing countries and especially during the 2000s. Trade liberalization has also contributed to global trade expansion. As trade barriers have fallen, increased production sharing and specialization have led to expansion of both exports and imports. These developments have led to increased import shares in almost all countries. While much of liberalization has been unilateral, there are also greater uses of regional agreements.  

Recent developments suggest world demand decreases (or slower demand growth) for the near future and it would be difficult to recreate the rapid demand growth of 2000s. Yet the import penetration and growth of both imports and exports should continue if the liberalized trade regimes are maintained and improved. Thus it is important to have some understanding about the relative contribution of market share changes (created because of more liberal trade regimes) and import increases caused by the increases in demand. It is also important to separate 1990s when demand growth was lower from the 2000s when demand growth was much higher.

This paper decomposes import growth rates for a set of large industrial and developing countries (five industrial and eight developing) and measures the relative contributions of domestic demand and market share changes for two separate periods 1991/92-2001/02 and 2001/02- 2007/08 (using 2-year averages to minimize the annual fluctuations in trade and output production). It also shows the changes in the shares of imports both from the rest of the world and from developing countries for aggregate and three digit manufacturing sectors. Import shares and their changes show the relative magnitude of the openness in key industrial and developing countries and its change over the last two decades. Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and United States were selected as the industrial countries, and China, Brazil, India, Korea Republic, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey were selected as the developing countries¹.

Most of the market share analyses have been carried out using only exports, and testing whether the exports of a specific country have expanded at the same rate as world exports [1-6] etc. These exercises take the world trade growth as given and estimate the relative performance of counties against this trend, and not what determines that trend. The contribution of market share changes versus demand increases in explaining trade growth has not received much attention². One simple way of analyzing this issue is to see whether the growth of imports in selected markets are driven by the demand increases or they have expanded by gaining market shares in the importing countries. This can be done by estimating the shares of imports in domestic absorption and then measuring the changes in these shares. These changes in shares show the contributions of share changes while import increases under constant market shares show the contribution of demand increases. This decomposition can also shed light on the likely outcomes for world trade growth under different global demand growth scenarios [7,8].

A related issue involves the role of developing (especially emerging market) countries in world manufacturing trade. Many have also argued that developing country exports are taking a big share of the markets in industrial countries and that within manufacturing a significant portion of production is moving from industrial to developing countries. Some have even argued that this development is leading to deindustrialization of many industrial countries. Along with the decomposition exercise, this paper also estimates the magnitude of developing country exports (aggregate and 3 digit) within the domestic absorption and production in these selected countries (both industrial and developing) and their evolution over the last two decades.

Finally, the study analyzes two periods with very different trade growth rates. World trade growth in current US dollars accelerated for all countries during 2001/02-2007/08 period but the acceleration of export growth of developing countries was greater and reached 18.2 percent per annum during this period. As a result developing countries have increased their market share of global manufactured exports and imports from about 20 and 35 percent in 1991/92 to 44 and 46 percent in 2007/ 08 respectively.

Section B explains the methodology and the data. In Section C, the shares of total imports from the rest of the world and their decomposition are analyzed separately for the selected industrial and developing countries. Section D focuses on exports from developing countries to industrial and other developing countries, and extends the analysis to 3-digit ISIC sectors. Very rapid growth of China, especially during the 2000s distorts most of the conclusions and analyses in the previous sections. The impact of China is discussed throughout the text in but given its importance, Section E summarizes its impact on world trade. Section F provides the main results and implications from this empirical analysis. Conclusions are presented in Section G. 

The main findings in this paper show that world demand growth is very different during 1990s and 2000s. Demand growth has accelerated during the 2000s. While market share changes explain most of the growth during the 1990s, its contribution is relatively smaller during the 2000s. Even without demand growth, continued liberal trade regimes could generate 3 - 5 percent per annum manufacturing trade growth caused by market share changes.

Imports from developing countries have grown much faster both in industrial and developing country markets. Despite the rapid growth, their share in the absorption of the sample countries is still very low and can expand substantially even if demand growth is much lower in the near future. However, most of this share increase is driven by China. Furthermore, China is among few countries which have reduced its share of imports from other developing countries. Future manufacturing trade growth will depend on the evolution of trade patterns of China as much as other economic developments.

2. Methodology and Data

The total gross absorption (demand) in each country is estimated as gross production in manufacturing, minus exports plus imports, for the beginning and end years. Gross production is taken from UNIDO database [9] and checked against other sources for consistency³. All gross production data is converted to US dollars at the current average exchange rates, to make them consistent with trade data from UNSD COMTRADE [10] which is denominated in US dollars (see [11]). These are nominal US dollar values which include US dollar inflation and changes in the real exchange rates of local currencies against the US dollar⁴. Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and United States were selected as the industrial countries, and China, Brazil, India, Korea Republic, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey were selected as the developing countries.

Import growth in these countries is decomposed into changes due to demand increases and changes due to market share changes. The contribution of demand changes is estimated assuming a constant share of imports in gross domestic demand between the two time periods, i.e. the market shares do not change. The market share changes are then estimated as the difference between the actual import growth rate and the import growth rate under a constant market share assumption. The periods of 1991/ 92, 2000/01, and 2007/08 are used as benchmarks to estimate the growth rates and import shares. Two year averages are used to minimize the annual fluctuations in output and trade. 2007/08 is used as the final year both due to data availability, and more importantly, it is the last year before the global financial crisis. The analysis of the impacts of the crisis on trade values requires a separate study.

This simple method has some limitations. First, it assumes that the income elasticity of demand for specific products exported by a group of countries is identical to the average income elasticity for the sectors as a whole. This bias decreases as the number of products exported increases and as product categories get narrower. Second, it assumes that market share changes are independent of demand growth. Normally, one would expect that when the rate of growth of demand accelerates, there would be spillovers to imports that will increase the import shares. This relationship was tested using the both the detailed 3-digit subsector information using imports and exports from developing countries and aggregate global imports for the selected 13 countries. The relationship between the market share changes and demand changes were not significant across industries and countries⁵. (See Annex Table 1).

The developments in our sample countries (key players in world trade) do not exactly mimic total world trade developments but are quite close. In Table 1, key growth rates for world trade and the sample countries are presented. Major difference between all countries and our sample is that our sample of developing countries had a lower share of total imports in 1991/92 than total developing countries (at 24.3 percent versus 34.6 percent) and had much higher rate of import growth than total developing countries (11.5 percent p.a. versus 6.2) during the 1991/92-2001/02 period. The rest of the growth rates are not identical but not sufficiently different to create major differences of interpretation.

3. Aggregate Import Growth Decomposition

3.1. Industrial Countries

Tables 2 and 3 show the share of imports, import growth rates and their decomposition for the selected industrial and developing countries respectively⁶. Totals are weighted averages.

There is one important difference between the first period 1991/92-2001/02 and the second one 2001/02- 2007/08. Industrial countries’ demand growth almost quadrupled from 1.6 percent p.a. to 5.8 percent p.a. Market share changes moved in the opposite direction but only declined to 3.8 percent p.a. from 4.8 percent p.a. Average import growth, which is the sum of demand and market share changes, accelerated from 6.4 percent to 9.6 percent per annum.  

Along with the acceleration of demand growth during the second period, relative contribution of demand and market share changes to import growth got reversed. During the first period, except for France, the contribution of market share changes to import growth is much larger than the contribution of demand growth. France has actually import substituted during this period and reduced its share of imports. During the second period, demand increase rate has almost quadrupled and, except for Japan, the contribution of demand growth has been higher then market share changes. But even with higher contribution from demand growth, the role played by market share changes is highly significant and explains almost forty percent of total import growth even during the second period. Market share changes for Japan during both periods, and Germany during the first period, explain bulk of import growth. So if the market shares had stayed the same, and imports only grew at the same rate as domestic demand, the import growth rate in these five countries would have been only 1.6 percent p.a. during the first period and about 6 percent p.a. during the second. Conversely, even in the absence of any demand growth, imports would have increased 4.8 percent p.a. during the first and 3.8 percent p.a. during the second period; very respectable trade growth rates for rich countries.

The share of imports in domestic demand varies by country. In 2007/08, Canada had the highest share at about 47 percent followed by Germany and France at above 39 percent. Japan had the lowest at 13 percent. Despite two decades of increasing import shares for these five countries, their average import share in domestic demand have only increased to about 27 percent by 2007/08. Of this 27 percent, about 11 percent is attributable to imports from countries with preferential agreements (Annex Table 2). Thus, after a period of very rapid growth and liberal trade regime, import shares of the industrial countries, excluding imports from countries with preferential agreements, was only 16 percent. On the other hand, all five countries have experienced significant import share increases during the last two decades.

The definition of gross absorption used in this paper is not a very common concept. Annex Table 3 shows the import and exports as a share of gross domestic production which as a measure is more familiar. In this table there are few anomalies. Japan, which had a reputation of a major exporter during the pre-1990 period, had only 12 percent of its output exported and only imported 4 percent of its output equivalent in 1991/92. After two decades of very low domestic demand growth and export led expansion, its exports only reached 23 percent of output by 2007/08, which is less than a quarter of its output. Its imports only reached 11 percent of its output leading to larger trade surpluses as a percentage of its manufacturing output. Germany shows even a greater export orienttation during the 2000s. Both its import and output shares in output increased but the increase in its export shares are much greater and leading to large trade surpluses⁷. By 2007/8, Germany exported almost half of its output, highest among large industrial countries.

3.2. Developing Countries

Developing country import behavior in some ways is similar to that of the industrial countries. Import growth rates accelerate from already high rates of 10 percent p.a. during the first period to almost 18 percent p.a. during the second. The acceleration of demand growth is much more dramatic; from an average of 6.2 percent growth per annum during to first period to almost 24 percent p.a. during the second, much higher than that of industrial countries. During the first period, demand growth is high in Mexico and China and low in Brazil, Turkey and South Africa. During the second period, demand growth accelerates in almost every country, reaching 31 and 23 percent per annum respectively in China and India.

During the first period, import shares increase in all our sample countries. Some are very dramatic, such as Turkey and Mexico caused by joining NAFTA for Mexico and EU for Turkey. Other developing countries such as and Brazil also have high rates of import share increases.

The second period is different from the first beyond the rapid acceleration in demand growth. The average contribution of market share changes for developing countries are negative, suggesting that there has been import substitution within the manufacturing sector despite trade liberalizations. While China accounts for most the import substitution⁸, even without China, the net markets share changes in Malaysia, and Mexico are also negative and large⁹. The differences between other developing countries that have increasing import shares, and China, Mexico and Malaysia that have decreasing import shares, suggest further differentiation.

Mexico and Malaysia had manufacturing sectors that had significant assembly operations using mostly imported components and thus had very high import shares. Malaysia had these industries starting in the 1980s. Mexico expanded the “Maquiladores” after it joined NAFTA in 1994. In 2001/02, Malaysia had an import share of 58 percent while for Mexico this share reached 78 percent. While Chinese manufacturing does not fit this definition fully, it also had a large export sector that was based on imported components with relatively lower value added [12-16]. During the 2000s, these three countries must have increased domestic supply of components and reduced the share of imports. Many of the imported components and intermediaries might have started to be produced domestically because of larger domestic demand for them and larger scale suppliers might have invested in these countries to be close to their markets. Or alternatively some goods for final demand might have started to be locally produced.

If these three countries, China, Mexico, and Malaysia are excluded from our developing country list; market share changes in the remaining developing countries are quite similar to developments in industrial countries. Figure 1 shows average market share changes and demand increases for the three groups of countries. First group is the five industrial countries. The second group is the three import substituting countries of China, Mexico and Malaysia. The third group is the other five large developing countries (India, Brazil, Korea Republic, South Africa, and Turkey).

Import substituting countries (including China, Mexico, and Malaysia) have much higher import growth rates during the first period with little market share changes and during the second period a faster demand growth rate with reductions in import shares. Other developing countries group (Brazil, India, Korea Republic, South Africa, and Turkey) has higher demand increases than industrial countries (much higher during the second period) but rather similar market share change rates. Industrial countries have market share changes of 4.8 and 3.8 percent p.a. during the first and second period respectively and the other developing country group has an average market share changes of 3.6 and 2.6 percent p.a. It is possible to argue that for most large countries, ceteris paribus, one can expect 3 - 5 percent trade expansion even if there are no increases in demand. The role of increases in import shares can be seen more clearly in Figure 2.

While the import substituting group shows large fluctuations driven primarily by China, the other two groups show steady increases in import shares. Other developing country group was slightly less open than industrial countries in 1991/92; this difference has continued during the second period and industrial countries continue to be more open. Again, one can assume that the other developing countries will continue to increase their import shares rates along with the industrial countries generating some trade growth even in the absence of demand growth.

4. Market Shares of Developing Country Exports

4.1. Industrial Countries

One of the important developments during the last few decades has been the rapid expansion of exports from developing countries both to the industrial countries and to other developing countries (see [17,18]). This has led to fears that industrial countries were being de-industrialized and most of manufacturing production would be taken over by the developing countries. There are also arguments that recent deceleration of growth in industrial

countries would lower the export and output growth of developing countries and the developments of last two decades might not be replicated. Tables 4 and 5 show behavior of manufacturing imports from developing countries for our sample of industrial and developing countries.

Table 4 shows the shares of imports from developing countries in the total gross absorption (demand) of the five industrial countries, growth rate of these imports, and the decomposition of the import growth between demand and market share changes. Import growth rates from developing counties (about 11 and 13 percent p.a.) are much higher than their import growth rates from the rest of the world shown in Table 2. Import growth rates from developing countries are almost identical for the two periods while world trade growth has doubled during this time. Especially during the first period when the demand increases in industrial countries amounted to only 1.6 percent per annum, imports from developing countries increased by more than 11 percent p.a. Most of the import growth was caused by market share changes rather than demand increases. During the second period, despite higher demand growth, market share changes are still greater than demand changes. For this group of industrial countries, market share changes explain the bulk of the growth of imports from developing countries¹⁰. Of course, market penetration of almost 10 percent p.a. is much more disruptive and politically more sensitive.  

Despite the rapid import growth caused by market penetration, by the end of the second period, the share of imports from developing countries in domestic absorption of this set of industrial countries was only about 12 percent. This 12 percent also includes the 12 countries that joined EU after 1992¹¹. Of the remaining 88 percent, 14 percent came from exports of other industrial countries; while the rest (74 percent) came from domestic production. If China is excluded, the share of developed country imports goes down to 6.8 percent. Excluding China and developing countries included in regional trade arrangements such as EU and NAFTA reduces the share of all other developing countries to only 4.3 percent. The share of imports from developing countries is lower in Japan and France compared to the other three countries (see Annex Table 4).

It is possible to interpret the changes in market shares of developing countries in two ways. One is to highlight the fast growth and argue that market shares have tripled over two decades, which is a very dramatic increase which cannot be sustained. Furthermore, developing countries have expanded their exports through primarily replacing domestic production.  

On the other hand, the shares of developing country exports (including China and EU 12 countries) in total demand of these industrial countries were less than 12 percent at the end of almost two decades of very rapid import growth. So small changes in market shares of developing countries in the markets of industrial countries over the next decades can drive the export growth from developing countries at very high rates even if their absolute absorption growth rates decline significantly over the next decades. The shares are still small enough so that fast growth of exports can be accomplished without significant production losses by the industrial countries.

This aggregate picture masks large differences in market penetration in different sub-sectors. Table 5 shows the market shares and the decomposition of import growth from all developing countries into the five Industrial countries by selected 22 3-digit sub-sectors. These 3- digit ISIC in Revision 3 sub-sectors range from very capital intensive, such as rubber and glass, to very labor intensive such as garments and footwear.

There are significant differences in market shares among different industries, arising from comparative advantage as well as differences in protection. There are two sets of subsectors that have reached high import penetration rates in 2007/08. First set includes the traditional labor intensive subsectors such as wearing apparel (70.3 percent), leather (71.4 percent), and textiles (40.2 percent). The second are the more recent labor intensive sectors such as office machinery (53.9 percent) and radio, television etc (36.5 percent). These are mostly classified as high technology products but their nominal growth rates have also been very low. These are the sectors where developing countries have gained significant market shares. On the other extreme sectors such as, tobacco (1.1 percent), paper (3.5 percent), publishing (2.7 percent), and food processing (5.3 percent) have low import shares.

In this set of subsectors, market share increases dominate import growth. In both periods and for almost all the subsectors, contribution of market share changes is greater than the contribution of demand growth. That is the reason for rapid import growth despite very low demand increases for many of the labor intensive subsectors. For example, for garments and footwear, despite negative and very low demand increases, imports have increased substantially purely on the basis of market share increases.

Market share gains are significant in almost all sectors including many of the high technology sectors such as machinery, medical precision equipment, and the like. This suggests that the rise of South in gaining competitiveness in sectors have the domain of industrial countries is significant and is continuing (Akyuz, 2012).

Finally, while the growing competitiveness of developing countries is impressive, a significant portion of the increases in market shares are driven by the exports from China (see details in Section E). This is especially prevalent in the 2000s where more than 70 percent of market share gains are due to increases in imports from China.

4.2. Developing Countries

One of the most important developments of the last two decades is the growth of south-south trade (see [19-25]). All developing country imports from all developing counties increased at a slower rate than their imports from industrial countries during the 1990s but these were reversed during the 2000s where their imports from developing countries grew at almost 25 percent versus 14 percent per annum growth for their imports from industrial countries. By 2007/08 they were importing more from other developing countries than they were from industrial countries (see figures on Table 1).

Narrowing the data to our sample of seven developing countries the results are slightly different. Their import growth rates from other developing countries are higher than their import growth rates from industrial countries in both periods. However, they still import more from industrial countries than they do from other developing countries (see Table 1). Their imports from industrial countries were 16.8 percent of their total absorption in 2001/02 while their imports from other developing countries were only 8.8 percent (see Tables 3 and 6). By 2007/08, these ratios were only 9.7 and 9.0 percent respectively. Our sample of developing countries have significantly reduced relative share of their imports from industrial countries and maintained their imports from developing countries. Thus, the sample developing countries’ import structure has become more balanced between industrial and other developing countries.

Acceleration of import growth from other developing countries to about 25 percent p.a. during the second period is especially dramatic. In all countries excluding China, share of imports from developing countries increased substantially along with higher import growth rates. In China also, import growth has increased to 25 percent per annum but the demand increase has been much higher than the import growth rates leading to declining shares of imports from developing countries in domestic demand. During the first period, excluding China and Malaysia, the contribution of market share changes are greater than demand increases. Even in the second period when demand increases dominate, absolute contributions of market share changes reach almost double digit levels in six out of eight countries. Thus China and to less extent Malaysia are an exception to the general trend of increasing share of imports from developing countries. While it has reduced its share of imports from other developing countries it has increased the share its exports in other developing countries and a significant part of the increase in the share of imports from developing countries is driven by the exports of China (see details in the next Section E). Without China, the increase in the shares of developing countries in out sample countries have also increased but at much slower rates.

Table 7 shows the disaggregated imports of our developing country sample from all developing countries by three digit industries. Again in many of the sectors the share of imports from developing countries is very low. For industrial countries the significant market shares are concentrated in two distinct sets of industries, traditional