Participation in global value chains and varieties of development patterns

Bruno Carballa Smichowski , Cédric Durand (1) , Steven Knauss (1)

1 CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord

This article explores the variety of socioeconomic outcomes from global value chains (GVCs) participation through a crosscountry analysis. In order to bridge the methodological and theoretical gap between GVCs critical insights and recent uses of the framework by international institutions, it proposes a novel definition of trade in GVCs and elaborates new indicators of GVC participation and value capture. Using these indicators and data from the Trade in Value added database it presents new descriptive statistics. Through principal component and cluster analyses it identifies three distinctive development patterns related to various degrees and modes of GVC participation: social upgrading mirage, reproduction of the core, and unequal growth. It finally discusses the complementarity of these patterns and explains why the results obtained challenge the narrative that GVC participation per se is a recipe for development.

Domaines: Economies et finances

Bruno Carballa Smichowski, Cédric Durand, Steven Knauss. Participation in global value chains and varieties of development patterns. 2018. ⟨hal-01817426⟩