Proceedings of 6th Annual American Business Research Conference
9 - 10 June 2014, Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel, New York, USA, ISBN: 978-1-922069-52-8
Comparative Advantage and Competitiveness of Textiles and
Apparel Industry of Bangladesh and China in Global Market
Md. Ekram Hossain*, Anqi Huang†, Thivan Vu‡ and Quang Dung Tran§
The paper explores the level of comparative advantage and competitiveness in Textile and
Apparel (T&A) industry of Bangladesh and China in the global market. It uses the Balassa
revealed comparative advantage (RCA) and Spearman Rank Correlation coefficient (r s) to
examine the comparative advantage and competitiveness for the two digit level of HS Code
of 14 main products of the industry over the period from 2000 to 2009. The findings show
that among the 14 products; Bangladesh improved her comparative advantage over 7
products, lowered over 5 products and remained quite unchanged over 2 products whereas
China improved her comparative advantage over 8 products lowered over 2 products and
remained quite unchanged over 4 products. According to the Competitiveness analysis of
the 14 products; 3 products exist higher competition, 6 products exist modest competition
and 5 products exist complementary between Bangladesh and China in global market. As a
result, implications were discussed in this paper.
Key words: Comparative Advantage; Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient;
Textiles and Apparel Industry; Bangladesh; China
Track: Economics
* Dr. Md. Ekram Hossain, Institute of Industrial Economics, Business School of Hohai University, No. 8 West Focheng
Road, Jiangning, Nanjing 211100, China. Email: mdekram_hossain@hhu.edu.cn
† Anqi Huang, Department of International Economy and Trade, Business School of Nanjing University, No. 163 Xianlin
Road, Qixia, Nanjing 210013, China. Email: 121090066@smail.nju.edu.cn
‡ Thivan Vu, Institute of Industrial Economics, Business School of Hohai University, No 8 West Focheng Road, Jiangning,
Nanjing 211100, China. Email: vuvan1690@hhu.edu.cn
§
Dr. Quang Dung Tran, Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Civil Engineering, Hanoi, Vietnam. Email:
trandung@hhu.edu.cn