A Manufacturing (Re)Naissance? Industrialization in the Developing World

This paper examines industrialization in developing countries. It introduces the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides consistent annual data of employment, real and nominal value added by 12 sectors in 51 economies for the period 1990–2018. Regressions that control for income and population indicate a manufacturing renaissance in several middle-income countries since the 2000s. We observe industrialization in many low-income Asian and sub-Saharan African countries. The industrial naissance in sub-Saharan Africa appears characterized by unregistered firms that expand employment.