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What's So Special about China's Exports? A Comment
Author(s) -
Kumakura Masanaga
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
china and world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.815
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1749-124X
pISSN - 1671-2234
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-124x.2007.00081.x
Subject(s) - sophistication , china , economics , interpretation (philosophy) , international economics , government (linguistics) , index (typography) , empirical research , work (physics) , empirical evidence , macroeconomics , international trade , political science , law , sociology , computer science , programming language , engineering , mechanical engineering , social science , linguistics , philosophy , epistemology , world wide web
Dani Rodrik argues that China's exports are unusually sophisticated for a country at its income level. He also claims that China's export sophistication reflects the government's successful industrial policy and has been instrumental in the recent acceleration of its economic growth. Although Rodrik's interpretation of China's economic growth is broadly correct, the accuracy of his empirical analysis is questionable. This note identifies several problems regarding the “export sophistication” index used in his empirical work and casts doubt on his analysis.