Can The World Trading System Accommodate More East Asian Style Exporters?

A CGE model of world trade is used to examine whether many developing countries can simultaneously expand manufactures exports along East Asian lines without suffering serious terms of trade decline and consequent welfare loss. Experiments are performed in which manufactures exports are expanded for each developing region in turn and for all regions simultaneously. When driven by productivity gains in manufactures exports production, welfare gains are found to be significant and stable, even enhanced by parallel advances in other developing regions: i.e. export growth is mutually reinforcing as a result of extensive South-South manufactures flow, a pattern that is intensifying. F 17]