Paper short abstract:

Theories of sectoral linkages serve the identification of optimal diversification patterns based on proximity between goods. The comparison of these theories leads us to challenge the role of comparative advantage on the determination of diversification pattern.

Paper long abstract:

Economic development is a mechanism of transformation of the economic structure: as the economy opens more widely to world markets, production becomes more modern and diversified, labor and capital migrates from traditional activities to industrial or service activities. In the recent literature on economic development, a consensus has emerged about the benefits of export and output diversification. It is generally claimed that diversification strategies can be a powerful way for those poor economies to shift to modern economies. Despite many developing countries appear to have slightly diversified their exportation and raised up forms of dynamic entrepreneurship, their productive structures do not seem to have evolved significantly. Building on that literature, my paper identifies several diversification patterns focused on the developing country's productive structure and discusses the relevance of those in what concerns African economies. A first section will review the existing literature on diversification and explain its role in the economic growth process. Since each country has its own set of comparative advantage, the main determinants of diversification will then be addressed in a second section. Various approaches of inter sectoral linkages will be described with the objective to define possible diversification patterns for poor economies. Finally, these theories will be compared in order to see if the different measures of the diversification are recovering or not the same logic. We will ask whether the omnipresence of comparative advantage can lead to diversification or rather durably stuck the economy into a rigid specialization. Illustrations from African economies will be used.