John A. Weiss’s research while affiliated with University of Bradford and other places

No Trade data are often classified by product characteristics. We propose a new classification “sophistication” as a means of distinguishing between products. We construct a sophistication index based on the income levels of exporting economies. Sophistication captures a range of factors including technology, ease of product fragmentation, natural resource availability, and marketing. We calculate sophistication scores at the 3- and 4-digit levels and test how far the index relates to existing technological classifications of products. We use the index to examine trade patterns and illustrate how it can be applied in the analysis of export performance of individual economies.

This paper explores China's competitive threat to Latin America in trade in manufactured goods. The direct threat to exports to third country markets appears small: Latin America and the Caribbean's (LAC's) trade structure is largely complementary to that of China. In bilateral trade, several LAC countries are increasing primary and resource-based exports to China. However, the pattern of trade, with LAC specializing increasingly in resource-based products and China in manufactured goods, seems worrying. Given cumulative capability building, China's success in increasingly technology-based products with strong learning externalities can place it on a higher growth path than specialization in “simpler” goods, as in LAC. China may thus affect LAC's technological upgrading in exports and industrial production. The issue is not so much current competition as the “spaces” open for LAC in the emerging technology-based world.

No How have Latin American exporters been affected by the rapid increase in the PRC's exports to the USA and other large markets? Are PRC and Latin American exports complementary or competitive with each other? This paper examines detailed trade data to provide answers to these important questions. It examines the meaning of a "competitive threat" and provides a way of assessing the degree of threat from trade statistics. In general it finds that export structures in PRC and Latin American economies are sufficiently different for trade to be basically complementary with at present only a small portion of Latin American exports under a "direct threat" from PRC exporters. Mexico is the economy that is potentially at greatest risk; but as yet this has not shown up in the data.