Premature Deindustrialization Risk in Asian Latecomer Developing Economies

Abstract This study examines the risk of premature deindustrialization in latecomer developing countries in Asia, focusing on their manufacturing output ratio. Diverging from the literature that treats Asian economies as a group with comparative advantages in manufacturing, this empirical analysis adopts the latecomer index to demonstrate downward shifts in the latecomers’ manufacturing–income relationship, implying a premature deindustrialization risk. Furthermore, it shows that the risk is higher for manufacturing trade-deficit countries (compared with trade-surplus countries) and for South Asian countries (compared with Southeast Asian countries). Therefore, Asian economies should improve their logistics performance for greater global value chain participation to avoid premature deindustrialization.