| The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the changing patterns of international trade behind the successful economic miracle of four Asian newly industrialized economies. We utilize the method of global comparative advantage, market shares, import profiles, revealed comparative advantage, and intra-industry trade analysis to identify the patterns from 1967 to 1987, the crucial period for the take off of the four Asian NIEs. Our findings show that there are no clear patterns in exports for any of the four Asian NIEs due to their dynamic changing economies. General patterns indicate that the Asian NIEs compete more effectively against the Japanese in the US market than in the EC market in labor intensive products, but, in capital intensive goods, no Asian NIEs effectively compete with Japan in both the US and EC markets. During the period we studied, the Asian NIEs switched from favoring labor intensive industry to capital intensive industry. The intra-industry trade patterns are clear, and increasingly so with the passage of time, for all Asian NIEs. The degree of IIT among the Asian NIEs is significantly high. This result contradicts most traditional IIT literature, which claims that IIT happens between high income countries. Our findings show that the theoretical prediction of IIT for capital intensive goods is better than for labor intensive products in the Asian NIE cases. The test results also show that the traditional IIT theory does not predict well in the case of Asian NIEs. The reason is that IIT theory cannot catch the dynamic part of Asian NIEs within our study's period. We also find that the economic development level plays a more important role in determining the degree of IIT among Asian NIEs. Therefore, it is recommended that the IIT theoretical model build in more dynamic features of fast growing economies, like those of the Asian NIEs, in order to predict the IIT more precisely. |
