An international comparison of productivity change in the textile and clothing industry: a bootstrapped Malmquist index approach

Firms in the textile and clothing industry operate in competitive international markets characterized by the liberalized trade after the removal of multi-fiber agreement quotas in 2005, and have to address rapid changes in consumer preferences and production technology. Hence, improving competitiveness is crucial for firm survival. Competitiveness of the sector often depends on its firms meeting their production potential. This paper analyzes productivity changes in the textile and clothing industry worldwide during the period 1995-2004. A bootstrapped Malmquist approach is used to identify the respective contributions of technical change, technical efficiency change, and scale efficiency change. Moreover, differences in productivity changes across different groups of firms are statistically assessed. Our results show a relatively small overall productivity increase for both textile and clothing firms due to positive technical change, despite declines in technical and scale efficiency. Furthermore, our results indicate that productivity and its components differ for textile firms and clothing firms, for firms in countries that benefited and did not benefit from the quotas' elimination, and for firms in different regions. © 2014 The Author(s).