Capital's response to globalization : "a comparative analysis of the adjustment patterns of mark-ups in post-liberalization developing countries"

Abstract

In this thesis, I investigate the capital’s response to the new world economic order termed as “globalization”. It is asserted in many theoretical and popular writings that increased pressures of global competition would squeeze the profit margins and reduce capital returns. I discuss this proposition theoretically and then test for it using manufacturing data for a selected group of developing countries under post-liberalization. I utilize time series and panel data econometrics to study the behavior of markups (gross profit margins) against wage costs, trade openness, and investment share in the GDP as a proxy for capacity utilization. Contrary to expectations, I find no significant conclusive evidence on the sign of “openness” on profit margins in many countries of my sample. My results also reveal that though mark-ups are negatively related with real wage costs in most of the Latin American countries in my sample, they have a positive and statistically significant relation to real wage costs in Turkish manufacturing. Finally, investment shares and mark-ups reveal a negative relationship for Argentina and Turkey and a positive one for Colombia.