Export diversification and growth in emerging economies

This paper develops and tests a model of growth in that emphasizes the introduction of new export as the main source of growth in countries that are far within the world technological frontier and that depend for growth on adapting existing products to their economic environment. It seeks to capture the stylized facts behind growth in countries as different as Korea, Taiwan, Mauritius, Finland, China, and Chile, all of which have depended on export diversification for their growth. Thus the widening of comparative advantage is seen as the main force behind economic growth. The hypothesis of export diversification is tested with an empirical growth model. Controlling for other variables that affect growth, export diversification, alone and interacted with per capital export volume growth, is found to be highly significant in explaining per capita GDP growth over the 1980-2003 period.