2004-08-012024-05-17https://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/handle/123456789/692023Abstract: In a working paper, I have argued that an important cause of the Hong Kong and Taiwanese post-war economic miracle was an increase in demand for time-intensive goods in the international marketplace. I define time-intensive goods as goods for which demand decreases quickly over time, either because fashions change (e.g., in the case of clothes) or because technology advances (e.g., in the case of computers). I argue that southern Chinese businesses have long had a comparative advantage in producing time-intensive goods, but that before international air and telephone service was developed, the natural barriers to international trade in these goods was very high so that foreign businesses could seldom compete with domestic producers. The problem with my working paper is that statistics on the Taiwanese and Hong Kong economies are very limited during the crucial 1950-1970 period. For this grant, I will use trade data gathered in the U.S. to look at the globalization of the clothing industry. I have access to data that divides textile and clothing imports into the U.S. from 1950 to 1962 into roughly 800 categories. This period is the period in which the globalization of the clothing industry took off. Taiwan’s clothing exports were still very limited but Hong Kong’s exports to the U.S. grew immensely during this period. Each year imports into the U.S. are reported by category and country of origin. I will test whether clothes imports did become increasingly time-intense. Preliminary work suggests that the earliest U.S. imports were goods less susceptible to change in fashion, e.g., underwear and socks, and that time-intensive outerwear became much more important during this period. I will also test the hypothesis that Hong Kong businesses practiced time-intensive guerilla capitalism. Many researchers observing Hong Kong businesses argue that these businesses profit by quickly identifying new markets, flooding the markets with goods and then moving on to new markets once prices are driven down. If this is true, it should show up in these detailed statistics. All other things being the same, in years when prices and volume are high in a particular category, Hong Kong’s share should be high and its share should diminish as prices fall.