The most highly internationalised industries are thought to be more competitive than the rest, since their high exposure to international competition forces them to strive constantly to become more efficient and they are in a position to take advantage of all the opportunities that arise in world markets. But to determine whether this is in fact the case, each country’s industries must first be classified in terms of their degree of globalisation.

This report proposes a method for classifying each country’s manufacturing industries by their extent of globalisation, using a set of indicators. The results obtained show that the degree of globalisation is more closely linked to the characteristics of industrial sectors than to the country’s specialisation. These results could be improved significantly if some of the proposed indicators were available ...