Movatterモバイル変換

[0]ホーム

Jump to content

Deindustrialization

Edit links

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Process of reduction of industrial activity

Further information:Deindustrialisation by country

Bethlehem Steel inBethlehem,Pennsylvania, one of the world's leading steel manufacturers for most of the 20th century, discontinued most of its operations in 1982, filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and was dissolved in 2003.

Deindustrialization is a process ofsocial andeconomic change caused by the removal or reduction ofindustrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially ofheavy industry ormanufacturing industry.

Research has pointed to investment in patents rather than in new capital equipment as a contributing factor.^[1] At a more fundamental level, Cairncross and Lever offer four possible definitions of deindustrialization:^[2]^[3]

A straightforward long-term decline in the output of manufactured goods or inemployment in themanufacturing sector.
A shift from manufacturing to theservice sectors, so that manufacturing has a lower share of total employment. Such a shift may occur even if manufacturing employment is growing in absolute terms
That manufactured goods comprise a declining share of externaltrade, so that there is a progressive failure to achieve a sufficient surplus ofexports overimports to maintain an economy in external balance
A continuing state ofbalance of trade deficit (as described in the third definition above) that accumulates to the extent that a country or region is unable to pay for necessary imports to sustain further production of goods, thus initiating a further downward spiral of economic decline.

Deindustrialization crisis

[edit]

The formerPackard Automotive Plant inDetroit, a recognizable symbol of thedecline of the city's once vibrantautomotive industry

The termdeindustrialization crisis has been used to describe the decline of labor-intensive industry in a number of countries and flight of jobs away from cities. One example is labor-intensivemanufacturing. After free-trade agreements were instituted with less developed nations in the 1980s and 1990s, labor-intensive manufacturers relocated production facilities tothird world countries with much lower wages and lower standards. In addition, technological inventions that required less manual labor, such asindustrial robots, eliminated many manufacturing jobs.^{[citation needed]}

Explanations

[edit]

Rowthorn and Wells^[4] distinguish between deindustrialization explanations that see it as a positive process of, for example, maturity of the economy, and those that associate deindustrialization with negative factors like bad economic performance. They suggest deindustrialization may be both an effect and a cause of poor economic performance.

Automation

[edit]

Inflation

[edit]

George Reisman^[6] identifiedinflation as a contributor to deindustrialization. In his analysis, the process offiat money inflation distorts the economic calculations necessary to operatecapital-intensive manufacturing enterprises, and makes the investments necessary for sustaining the operations of such enterprises unprofitable.

Offshoring and outsourcing

[edit]

Preferences

[edit]

A study covering advanced economies between 1995 and 2014, shows that the shrinking share of manufacturingvalue added inGDP was mainly driven by relative price movements and by shifts in final demand.^[9] Services became relatively more expensive than manufactured goods, so manufacturing’s share in GDP fell for largelynominal reasons. At the same time, services behaved assuperior goods, with consumption rising faster than income growth, while the demand for manufactured goods increased more slowly; this theory is referenced as a result ofEngel's law. Other factors, such as technological changes in input use or shifts in trade patterns, played only a minor role in the observed decline.

Other

[edit]

Robert Rowthorn, aUniversity of Cambridge professor of economics,^[10] argues thatKarl Marx's theory of declining industrial profit may be regarded as one of the earliest explanations of deindustrialization. This theory argues that technological innovation enables more efficient means of production, results in increased physical productivity, including a greater output of use value per unit of capital invested. In parallel, however, technological innovations replace people with machinery, and the organic composition of capital decreases. Assuming only labor can produce new additional value, this greater physical output embodies a smaller and surplus value. The average rate of industrial profit therefore declines in the longer term.