Financial Development and Textile Sector Competitiveness: A Case Study of Pakistan

Kletzer and Bardhan (1987) argue that countries with a relatively well-developed financial sector have a comparative advantage in industries that rely on external finance. Beck (2002) and Fanelli and Medhora (2002) find that well-developed financial sector translates into a comparative advantage in the production of manufactured goods. There has been no attempt so far to explore the relationship between the financial development and international trade competitiveness in the case of Pakistan. We construct Balassa's Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index for textile sector of Pakistan. Using ratio of credit extended to the textile sector to the total non-government credit of the banking system (Textile Credit Share [TCS]) as proxy for external finance, we estimate long-run relationship and Error Correction Mechanisms (ECM) between RCA index and TCS while controlling for other determinants of the international trade competitiveness of textile sector of Pakistan. In line with the findings of Beck (2002) and Fanelli and Medhora (2002), our results suggest that recourse to external finance has a strong positive impact on the country's textile sector competitiveness both in the short and the long run, even when we control for traditional determinants of competitiveness.