Shifting comparative advantage, the nics, and the developing countries

It has been suggested that there have been shifts in comparative advantage for labor-intensive manufactures from the Newly Industrializing Countires (NICs) to other developing countries, permitting these latter states to export these products to the world market. An analysis of changes in exports for selected three-digit product categories for manufactures for sixteen countries from 1968 to 1976 and from 1976 to 1982, however, indicated that such shifts have not occurred. Many of the other developing countries that have expanded such exports have done so in the same product categories as the NICs, not different ones. In other cases, export gains of some developing countries were matched by losses by other developing states.