International product life cycles, trade and development stages
基于产品生命周期理论，提出衡量一国出口早期阶段活动的指标，并分析其对93个国家1988-2005年经济增长的影响，发现不同收入国家的影响方向不同。
Abstract In this paper we first propose a proxy for early stage activity in a country’s exports based on product life cycle theory. Employing a conditional latent class model, we then examine the relationship between this measure and economic growth for 93 countries during the period 1988–2005. We find that the impact of early stage activity differs across three clusters of countries. And we find that GDP levels can predict the cluster and the sign of the coefficient in a non-linear manner. In the richest countries, exporting products that are in an early stage of their product life cycle is associated with higher growth rates. In contrast, we find a cluster of middle income countries with high growth rates that grow faster by exporting more mature products that are in the later stages of their life cycle. Finally, early stage activity has no significant impact on growth in the cluster of the poorest, developing countries. Countries in early stages of development should focus on acquiring market share in mature markets with routine technologies whereas emerging economies face the challenge of at some point switching from copying mature to inventing new products as they approach the global technology frontier. At that frontier they must join the advanced economies who specialise in early stage innovative products to stay ahead of increasing competition from abroad.