Competitiveness and complexity in manufacturing industry: A cross-country analysis

Competitiveness concept has been often used in economics and what it means has been debated for a long time. Though definitions have varied by different perspectives, common emphasis is importance of relative efficiency in trade performance while enhancing the living standards. In this study, first of all, sources of changes in the world export shares of sub-sectors under different technology categories for Turkey and selected countries were examined through shift-share analysis by using BACI dataset for the period 1990-2014 and seen that competitiveness term is most dominant component in the changes. However, China and Vietnam which they experienced rapid export growth and Ireland in high-tech industries have raised their market share further in most periods via adaptation performance to world markets in the products which have increasing demand. Second, relationship between industry-specific and nationwide capabilities of a country and competitiveness under different technology intensities of manufactuting industry has been investigated. Estimation results including UNIDO dataset showed that industry-specific complexity representing the capabilities provides more contribution to competitiveness in technology intensive industries, compared to other industries. Moreover, general complexity is positive and significant determinant of low-tech industries. Finally, human capital, market structure and import intensity of high-income countries have been found as main drivers of industry-specific complexity for technology intensive industries. Keywords: Competitiveness, Manufacturing Industry, Complexity, Capabilities,Constant Market Share Analysis, Turkey