A Note on the Links Between Manufacturing, Goods and Services Exports

The paper deals with the links between goods and cross-borders services exports. First it explains the reasons why services exports are presumably connected with manufacturing exports and altogether to goods exports. The paper scrutinises the various headings of the services account of the BOP. It points out that firms, whether manufacturing or services-producing tend to exports both goods and services. It then turns to the international division of labour and fragmentation process. Second, the paper proposes statistical analyses based on time series of goods and services exports. The first one concerns annual one-digit headings for 13 developed countries. The last one pertains to quarterly data from 1994 to 2011 for 24 developed countries. Not surprisingly, the results tend to ascertain the complementarities of the two types of exports, with a correlation of around 60 %. This exploratory study however calls for future improvements and reconsiderations that could go beyond basic time series analysis.