From Global Factory to Global Mall: East Asia's Changing Trade Composition

40 Pages Posted: 21 Aug 2014

See all articles by Matthias Helble

Matthias Helble

Asian Development Bank; ADBI; ADBI

Boon-Loong Ngiang

Asian Development Bank Institute

Date Written: August 20, 2014

Abstract

This paper studies how East Asia’s trade composition and orientation have changed over the past decade and analyzes the implications for the region and beyond. Over the last 2 decades we have witnessed the emergence of regional and global supply chains, in which production is divided into production stages or tasks across the most competitive locations. East Asia has been the most successful region in the world in building up or joining regional and global supply chains and has been described as “Factory Asia” (Baldwin 2008). Introducing a new and simple analytical tool, we show that over the past decade East Asia has successfully consolidated its role as the “Global Factory.” Furthermore, studying East Asia’s recent trade patterns in primary, intermediate, capital, and consumption goods, our results indicate that East Asia is on track to becoming one of the biggest “malls” in the world. Whereas in 1999-2000 around half of all consumption goods exported by East Asia went to the United States and the European Union-27, in 2011-2012 half stayed in the region or were traded with the rest of the world.

Keywords: Global supply chains, trade composition, East Asia, Factory Asia, Global Factory, Global Mall

JEL Classification: F14, F15, N15

Suggested Citation

Helble, Matthias and Ngiang, Boon-Loong, From Global Factory to Global Mall: East Asia's Changing Trade Composition (August 20, 2014). ADBI Working Paper 496, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2483624 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2483624

Matthias Helble (Contact Author)

Asian Development Bank ( email )

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ADBI ( email )

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ADBI ( email )

Kasumigaseki Building 8F
3-2-5, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, 100-6008
Japan

Boon-Loong Ngiang

Asian Development Bank Institute ( email )

Kasumigaseki Building 8F
3-2-5, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, 100-6008
Japan

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