纺织品行业及贸易外文文献翻译资料.docx

1、纺织品行业及贸易外文文献翻译资料文献信息标题: Revealed Comparative Advantage of Carpets and Textile Floor Covering Industry in Pakistan, India and China作者: Altaf, Saba期刊名称: Journal of Economic Cooperation & Development；卷: 35；期: 4；页: 113-133；年份: 2014Revealed Comparative Advantage of Carpets and Textile Floor Covering Indu

2、stry in Pakistan, India and China1. IntroductionThe global trade pattern has been changed in the pursuance of trade liberalization policies in the form of removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers, reduction in quotas and technological advancement on the part of world economies. South Asian economie

3、s such as China and India are seeking a favorable position from the trade composition perspective in the international markets. These countries possess comparative advantage in textile sector and show a noteworthy growth in changing trade patterns across the world. Pakistan has a great potential to

4、stand out in this sector in the region as a prospective and overwhelming proportion of labor force is engaged in this sector. It is expected that export-led growth strategy cause a significant boost in production, employment and the productivity of labor along with the improvements in overall econom

5、ic status but the political and socio-economic conditions in addition to primitive types of technology use may hinder the way to rapid progress. Pakistans current export structure requires structural transformation and changes in its export diversification and prototype specialization. The industria

6、l sector in Pakistan has been playing a pivotal role in the national economy in terms of its share in GDP, exports, employment, foreign exchange earnings, investment and its contribution to the value added industry. China is one of the worlds largest textiles exporters, accounting for one third of t

7、he global textile trade volume. Although the prolonged anti-dumping investigations hit the countrys textile export, still textile industry in China has remained a key pillar of development in the country. It has played a vital role in proliferation of various sectors of the economy. Due to its large

8、 contribution in the economic growth, Chinese government has remained very much focused to upgrade this sector. India, another major exporter of textile goods is self-reliant and independent with lots of versatility and diversification in textile sector. Apart from providing one of the basic necessi

9、ties of life i.e. cloth, the textile industry contributes about 14 % to the countrys industrial output and about 17 % to export earnings. This sector stands at second in the provision of jobs to people after agricultural sector. There is continuing debate and emerging concern about the position of t

10、hese countries in the world market and the resulting edge of China for intensified competition in the labor-intensive manufactured goods. This signifies the importance of the structure of comparative advantage in selected countries; China, India and Pakistan and to find out the extent of competition

11、 among these countries in the market of selected subsector i.e., textile. This study focuses on one of the important sub-sector of textile industry i.e. Carpets and other textile floor Coverings (under the category of code 57 as per Harmonized System of classification, HS). The carpet industry plays

12、 a fundamental role in determining the export bearing of Pakistan. There has been an ever increasing demand for carpets and floor coverings both in Pakistan and around the globe. Carpets have always been a valuable asset since ages and therefore remained in vogue. This was gradually commercialized i

13、n Pakistan because of the development of export market. Commercialization gave new dimensions to this industry and it started expanding in rural areas due to the availability of cheap labor. This is one of the sectors that grew tremendously during 1970s and 80s. Among the value added goods it remain

14、ed on the top of the list (Awan and Khan, 1992). This sector started getting a set back after the issue of child labor raised by international organizations. As majority of the carpet weavers in Pakistan were estimated to be children less than 15 years of age. Although, data on the Pakistan labor fo

15、rce and child labor is vulnerable. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that child labor has assumed massive proportions in Pakistan. The actual total number of working children in Pakistan is probably somewhere between 2 and 19 million.2 Primarily, the promotion of carpet industry depends upon avail

16、ability of raw material, presence of skilled weavers and the tradition of weaving art, etc. The skill and productivity of workers in carpet industry along with the availability of socio-economic infrastructure affects the competitiveness of this sector. Despite the presence of weaknesses in few area

17、s, the carpet industry serves as a backbone for the economy of Pakistan. It has been a major source of foreign exchange earnings and contributes a lot in relief of poverty, especially in rural areas. Presently this industry is not revealing a significant export growth and there is a dire need to foc

18、us on the provision of infrastructure to support the growth of this industry. A UNICEF-Punjab report (1992) asserted that according to conservative estimates, one million out of 1.5 million workers in the carpet industry in Pakistan were children. A separate 1992 UNICEF/Govemment of Pakistan study r

19、eported that 90 percent of the one million workers in the carpet industry are children, many of whom began working in the industry before 10 years of age. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan found that weaving thrives in self-contained homesteads, where labor is cheap and readily available. Diff

20、erent techniques have been used in literature to determine countrys competitiveness in selected industry. One of the most widely used methods involves the concept of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) developed by Balassa (1965). Revealed comparative advantage (RCA), a measure of international com

21、petitiveness specifies that a country is defined as being specialized in exports of a certain product if its market share in that product is higher than the average. A number of studies are available on measuring competitiveness in various sectors of Pakistan, but there is no empirical work done on

22、RCA of Pakistan in carpet and other textile floor coverings industry till the year of this study conducted. For small as well as growing economies, competitiveness is essential for promoting economic development and to survive in the globalized world where carpet industry holds its own worth. From t

23、he above given perspective, the objective of this study is to analyze the comparative advantage of the carpet industry in Pakistan and compare it with selected South Asian countries .i.e. China and India. These countries were selected for measuring and comparing RCA with Pakistans because they are s

24、imilar in size and factor endowments and core competitor of Pakistan in the world market. The study enables us to find out the competitiveness of this sector in the world market and can probe at the future potential of growth in the carpet industry of Pakistan. The Balassa Index (1965) is used to fi

25、nd out the comparative advantage at 2-digit and 4-digit level of Harmonized System of Classification. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Next section provides the literature survey followed by the methodology and data description. The empirical results of the study are reported and discu

26、ssed in section 4. Last section concludes the study with some policy recommendations. 2. Review of Literature A number of studies have been conducted to find out Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) using Balassa Index (1965). This section provides a brief literature review that can give a better kn

27、owledge and understanding of the pattern of RCA in different countries for different sectors. Balassa (1977) has undertaken an analysis of the pattern of comparative advantage of industrial countries for the period 1953 to 1971. The empirical findings of this study suggest a renewal of the product c

28、ycle for US that possess an ever increasing technical lead. Based on the standard deviation of the RCA indices for different countries an association is also seen to hold between size and diversification of exports. Furthermore, Balassas results show that the extent of export diversification tends t

29、o increase with the degree of technological development and a reversal takes place at higher levels in the trade patterns. Leishman et al. (1999) empirically analyzed the international competitiveness for agricultural commodities by applying Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) for wool- exporting c

30、ountries. A number of six wool producing countries are selected for measuring RCA over the time period of 37 years. RCA index for Australia, Argentina, Newzeland, South Africa, United Kingdom and Uruguay indicates that GATT Uruguay Round has changed the RCAs of countries significantly. Mehmood (2005

31、) analyzed the export specialization and comparative advantage/disadvantage of Pakistans non agriculture production sectors in the context of on-going multilateral trade negotiations. The study uses RCA approach at HS-4 digit level for the period 1990-2000. The data set has been drawn from Internati

32、onal Trade Statistics compiled by the Australian National University (AND). The data set comprises 16 product categories made up of 978 product lines. Findings show that Pakistans top-ranking exports belong to textiles and clothing sector, consistent with the natural and human factor endowments howe

33、ver Pakistan has failed to move from low value added to technically intensive high value added manufacturing. Pakistans economic well-being depends on the extent to which the non-agricultural sector remains competitive and contributes to economic growth, exports, investment and employment. Batra and Khan (2005) examined the structure of co