Metal intensity in comparative historical perspective: China, North Asia and the United States

China as a Global Manufacturing Powerhouse: Strategic Considerations and Structural Adjustment

“…In addition to a consideration of the usual macroeconomic variables, we have assembled long time series of urbanization rates, infrastructure investment, metal and energy intensity and automobile penetration to add a practical edge to the discussion. These indicators have been shown to contain substantial information on the development process (Song and Yu, 2007;McKay, 2008b) and are essential metrics for assessing the scale of global adaptation to the emergence of a new powerhouse. associated with the deceleration of latecomer growth and a peak in the industrial valueadded share of output.…”

China’s metal intensity in comparative perspective

“…China's steel use is converging with that of the CIS, where urbanisation is significantly higher. In the case of Japan, its steel intensity is much higher than that of the United States with a lower level of urbanisation, despite the density of its population and its weak resource endowment (McKay 2008). It is both theoretically and intuitively sound to include urbanisation rates in the empirical test.…”

“…Third, we use long time-series data at five-yearly intervals, rather than a contemporary cross-section from a selection of economies at various development levels. We thereby avoid the problems inherent with cross-sectional analysis, particularly where there are data constraints (McKay 2008). 4 Finally, we broaden our empirical analysis to incorporate macroeconomic variables such as investment propensity, urbanisation rates, openness to trade and automobile penetration.…”

“…It has been noted previously that China's post-1978 history of ferrous metal use has many similarities with the Korean experience McKay 2008;McKay and Song 2009). Will China continue to follow a path such as Korea's-a nation in which metal intensity of economic activity has remained high for a sustained period; or will the metal intensity of growth only remain high while China is a middle income country en route to the current resting place of the European economies and their offshoots?…”

“…To examine the potential Kuznets relationship between long-term steel demand per capita and economic development, we follow McKay (2008) by assuming that steel demand per capita is a function of income per capita, its square term and a control vector (Equation 5.6).…”