What is Premature Deindustrialization?

Tyler Cowen from Marginal Revolution explores the concept of premature deindustrialisation.

Deindustrialisation is a shrinkage in either the absolute or relative size of a country's manufacturing sector over time. For a number of lower and middle income countries, might their economic development strategy be affected by automation and robotics which hampers the potential for labour-intensive manufacturing?

The idea of premature deindustrialisation has been promoted by the development economist Dani Rodrik who wrote in 2015 that "countries are running out of industrialization opportunities sooner and at much lower levels of income compared to the experience of early industrializers."

2015 Dani Rodrik paper on premature disindustrialisation and also his 2017 article in Project Syndicate - Growth Without Industrialization?

The Economist (October 2017)

Premature deindustrialization: the new threat to global economic development (Vox, 2016)