The Middle-Income Trap from the Viewpoint of Trade Structures: Are the Geese Trapped or Still Flying?

摘要

In this paper we try to explain the concept of middle-income trap from the viewpoint of international trade. We conduct an empirical analysis on the relationship between income levels and net export ratios for different types of goods for trapped and non-trapped countries separately. Our findings indicate that industrial upgrading appears to occur exactly as depicted by the flying-geese (FG) model for non-trapped countries. Trapped countries tend to depend on the export of primary commodities and industrialization appears to be driven by forward linkages to processed goods.