Impact of Jamaica's export-led development model on its indigenous garment assembly sector.

摘要

Textiles propelled European industrialization and that of the United States. Japan followed suit after the Second World War and the East Asian Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) continued on the same path in the 1960s. In the 1980s, stimulated by the US-sponsored Caribbean Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) or Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), many Caribbean countries including the Dominican Republic and Jamaica pursued export-led industrialization based on garment assembly. In contrast to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica failed in this effort as its garment assembly sector has fallen into decrepitude over the last twenty years.;This thesis aims at assessing why Jamaica's export-led development model failed to upgrade its garment assembly sector, increase high value-added exports, boost employment, and provide badly needed jobs for the Jamaican people. In analytical terms the success of export-led growth in the garment rested on reform of a series of endogenous and exogenous factors. I show that the main features necessary for a successful export-led industrialization program based on garment production are a strong role for the state in the economy and its skillful interactions with multinational corporations (MNCs) and indigenous firms. The state has a significant role to play in skill formation, the creation of a suitable market environment, support for local industries capable of absorbing new technologies, and the establishment of sound macroeconomic, fiscal, and financial policies. To the extent that successive Jamaican governments from the mid-1960s forward failed for a variety of reasons to perform this role the economy lurched forward and backward and never succeeded in establishing a stable industrial base in the country.