Structural Breaks, Manufacturing Revolutions, and Economic Catch-up: Empirical Validation of Historical Evidence from South Korea

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to look at how South Korea can catch up to the rest of the world through policy-driven structural change and manufacturing revolutions. To achieve the objective, this study used annual data on real exports and real GDP from the World Development Indicator WDI of South Korea for the period 1960 to 2019. The study's goal is to use econometrics to detect this policy-driven structural change trend. Multiple nonlinear Granger causality test was used to accomplish this. The findings revealed structural breaks and nonlinearities in the dynamic link between South Korea's real GDP and real exports. Furthermore, results also show evidence of multiple structural breaks in South Korean data. South Korea's economic catch-up was the result of a constant reevaluation of industrial policies, readjustment, and structural change to constantly explore and utilize comparative advantage, realizing economies of scale at the global level, and reallocating and redistribution of resources towards productive sectors with high value-added output, according to econometric analysis. If South Korea would have not done this structural change this miracle to escape the middle-income trap would not have been possible. These findings support the descriptive evidence of structural change in favor of manufacturing revolutions and value addition industry development in South Korea.