Artikel

Restructuring of the international clothing and textile trade network: The role of Italy and Portugal

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.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Journal: Journal of Economic Structures ; ISSN: 2193-2409 ; Volume: 5 ; Year: 2016 ; Issue: 16 ; Pages: 1-29 ; Heidelberg: Springer

Classification
Wirtschaft
Input-Output Models
Empirical Studies of Trade
Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
Subject
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

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Schütz, Marlies Hanna
Palan, Nicole
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Springer
(where)
Heidelberg
(when)
2016

DOI
doi:10.1186/s40008-016-0046-7
Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET

Data provider

This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.

Object type

  • Artikel

Associated

  • Schütz, Marlies Hanna
  • Palan, Nicole
  • Springer

Time of origin

  • 2016

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