CIAO DATE: 12/2009
August 2009
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Th is paper documents an unusual and possibly signifi cant phenomenon: the export of skills embodied in goods, services, or capital from poorer to richer countries. We fi rst present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure that combines the sophistication of a country’s exports with the average income level of destination countries, we show that the performance of a number of developing countries, notably China, Mexico, and South Africa, matches that of much more advanced countries, such as Japan, Spain, and the United States. Creating a new combined dataset on foreign direct investment (FDI) (covering greenfi eld investments as well as mergers and acquisitions) we show that fl ows of FDI to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from developing countries like Brazil, India, Malaysia, and South Africa as a share of their GDP are as large as fl ows from countries like Japan, Korea, and the United States. Th en, taking the work of Hausmann et al. (2007) as a point of departure, we suggest that it is not just the composition of exports but their destination that matters. In both cross-sectional and panel regressions, with a range of controls, we fi nd that a measure of uphill fl ows of sophisticated goods is signifi cantly associated with better growth performance. Th ese results suggest the need for a deeper analysis of whether development benefi ts might derive not from deifying comparative advantage but from defying it.
Resource link: Criss-Crossing Globalization: Uphill Flows of Skill-Intensive Goods and Foreign Direct Investment [PDF] - 216K