Opportunities in Global Economic Structural Transformation and Upgrading

The analysis from Chaps. 3 to 6 on the trajectory of economic structural change has revealed that economic development is an ongoing process of industry and technological upgrading. Regardless of the stage of development, a country can successfully advance its development process if it leverages government facilitation in the market economy to help enterprises actively develop industries aligning with the country’s comparative advantage (determined by its factor endowment structure). The key to success lies in developing countries harnessing the latecomer advantage to establish mature industries that are dynamically growing in more advanced countries with similar endowment structures. There are ample opportunities for economic transformation for low-income economies in the era of globalization. The emergence of numerous new centers of growth (leading to a multipolar world, as introduced in Sect. 2 of Chap. 2 ) provides economically backward countries with the chance to enter a new era of rapid industrialization and structural transformation. Meanwhile, economies at the global frontier continually push the boundaries of structural transformation, accelerating the pace of change in the global economic structure. This chapter will primarily use manufacturing and employment as examples to discuss the development opportunities in the structural transformation of the global economy, as employment is fundamental to poverty reduction and human development.