Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/147234 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Economic Structures [ISSN:] 2193-2409 [Volume:] 5 [Issue:] 16 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Heidelberg [Year:] 2016 [Pages:] 1-29
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Since the 1990s, the clothing and textile (C&T)-industry has been tremendously affected by changes in technology, trade costs, and the institutional environment. This paper studies the restructuring of C&T-trade from the perspective of Europe's two most prominent C&T-goods producing countries-Italy and Portugal. We explore these two countries' situation in a global context and concentrate our analysis to two distinct economic variables, C&T-value added and C&T-labor. Moreover, we contribute to the existing literature by distinguishing between domestically and internationally traded C&T-goods as well as between trade in intermediate and final demand C&T-goods, which enables us to give a more full-fledged picture on restructuring of C&T-trade. We show that international C&T-production became more concentrated between 1995 and 2009. In a further step, we investigate changes with regard to import penetration of C&T-trade, international outsourcing, the distance to final demand for C&T-goods, and another range of country-specific trade patterns. Our main findings reveal that Italy was more oriented toward C&T-production activities which generate high value added, whereas Portugal was less productive and relatively more specialized into the production of labor-intensive C&T-goods. Thus, Portugal was more prone to the rising international pressure from low-wage countries, whereas in Italy restructuring of C&Ttrade had comparatively less severe effects.
Subjects: 
Restructuring
Clothing and textile industry
International trade network
Trade of intermediate and final demand C&T-goods
Directly embodied C&T-value added and -labor
Italy and Portugal
JEL: 
C67
F14
O12
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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