It is my impression that manufacturing is hit harder than many other sectors in the current depression. At least this is true in Sweden which is a small country with several big exporting manufacturing companies. My impression is that the car industry of the US is in a similiar situation.
I would like to understand better how this relates to the Austrian capital structure theory. Manufacturing mostly represents higher order goods, since there are chains of subsuppliers to the companies who assemble and brand the finished goods. If manufacturing has been bolstered more than, say, services, by the low interest rates during the boom phase, then it would make sense that it suffers more now during the bust. But it seems strange to me, since outsourcing of manufacturing (to Asia and former communist countries i Europe) has been heavy for a couple of decades now.
What text can you recommend about the capital structure theory? And is such a theory possible to apply on forecasting, or at least understanding, how a boom-bust cycle over time asymetrically affects different economic sectors (such as mining, manufacturing, construction, services)?