Gaps in the study of deindustrialization in countries beyond the USA and the UK

• In Event: Economic Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 9: Industrial Changes and Employment

Abstract

Deindustrialization has often been treated as a single long-run trend of declining manufacturing importance, indexed in a variety of ways. Increasingly, however, research shows deindustrialization is best conceptualized as a bundle of partly distinct processes whose measurement, causes, and consequences vary sharply by country, region, and period. In the US- and the UK, whose scholars have defined and dominated this discourse, the strongest cumulative evidence is centred on (i) place-based manufacturing shocks and their persistence, (ii) the trade–technology debate (import competition, offshoring, automation, and organizational restructuring), and (iii) the role of institutions and political economy in mediating adjustment. Major gaps remain, especially when these approaches are transferred to the study deindustrialization in other countries, such as Canada and Italy, for purposes of this paper. The work reported herein focuses on four cross-cutting research gaps: (1) conceptual and measurement incompleteness; (2) under-identified causal decomposition; (3) incomplete mapping of consequences; and (4) neglected margins and heterogeneity. This analysis deals primarily with the steel sector and while focusing on Italy and Canada, it also includes comparisons among all G7 member states on the above noted dimensions. In addition, the paper suggests that future research on deindustrialization should (a) adopt value-chain-consistent conceptualizations (trade in value-added or TiVA, full international and global accounts for research in input–output analysis or FIGARO) alongside sectoral measures, (b) combine microdata (worker–firm linkages, plant closures, just transitions, trade shocks, and technology adoption) with credible counterfactuals (synthetic control, event-study difference-in-differences, structural decomposition), and most importantly (c) build explicit hypotheses relating institutionally mediated adjustments to deindustrialization that could be testable in G7 countries like Canada and Italy and even more broadly.

Author

• Anthony C. Masi, McGill University