Measuring the Spread of Modern Manufacturing to the Poor Periphery

This chapter documents industrial output growth around the poor periphery (Latin America, the European periphery, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa) between 1870 and 2007. We find that although the roots of rapid peripheral industrialization stretch into the late nineteenth century, the high point of peripheral industrialization was the 1950–73 period, which saw widespread import-substituting industrialization (ISI). This ISI period was also the high point of unconditional industrial catching-up, defined as the tendency of less industrialized countries to post higher per capita manufacturing growth rates than more industrialized countries. However, this post-Second World War ISI episode was preceded by significant industrial catching-up, thus defined, in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the 1940s in Latin America. And the catching-up in those inter-war decades was not simply because of a manufacturing collapse of the leaders during the Great Depression.