GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database presented at STEG conference

On 13 January 2021, Gaaitzen de Vries, researcher at the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) and UNU-WIDER, presented new research findings on industrialization patterns in developing economies at the online annual conference of the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth research initiative.

De Vries introduced the work carried out under the collaborative project between GGDC and UNU-WIDER to construct the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database (ETD). Launched on 17 February 2021, the new open-access database provides comprehensive and internationally comparable sectoral data on productivity and employment for 51 economies, building on an in-depth investigation of statistical sources on a country-by-country basis as well as data from the GGDC 10-sector database.

Using the ETD, the research team documented a recent expansion of the share of workers in the manufacturing sector for many countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and most notably in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that it is too early to conclude that countries are running out of industrialization opportunities.

Emmanuel Mensah, postdoctoral researcher at GGDC, continued the discussion on the topic with the presentation of his paper ‘Is sub-Saharan Africa deindustrializing?’ on 15 January.

Find out more

A recording and the slides of the presentation ‘Re-industrialization’ by Gaaitzen de Vries, Hagen Kruse, Emmanuel Mensah, and Kunal Sen have been made available by the organizers on the event website.