Technological catching-up between two ASEAN members and China: A metafrontier approach

This paper examines the dynamics of the productivity gaps across Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Based on establishment-level panel datasets in the textile and electronics industries for the period 2000–2007, empirical results obtained from the meta-frontier approach show that there is a technological falling-behind rather than catching-up between Indonesia and China, as well as between Vietnam and China. This widening gap is witnessed in both the labor-intensive textile industry and the capital-intensive electronics industry, because China has experienced faster productivity growth and has upgraded its technological frontier after joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. A comparison of the two latecomers finds that Indonesia firms exhibit better productivity performance than do Vietnamese firms.