Measuring and analyzing the impact of GVCs on economic development (English)

The global economy is evolving rapidly. It presents a complex and ever-changing picture. The trends, opportunities, and challenges affect the lives of every person on the planet. But the forces at work and the results for trade, the structure of economies... See More + The global economy is evolving rapidly. It presents a complex and ever-changing picture. The trends, opportunities, and challenges affect the lives of every person on the planet. But the forces at work and the results for trade, the structure of economies and employment, incomes, and human capital values have been and still are at best incompletely understood. There is a growing body of research on the impacts of globalization and digital technology on individual economies. And there has been a huge and productive effort to reconfigure and refine trade data so as to expose the complex value-added structure of trade in goods and services, led by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and a number of other institutions. What has been largely missing is a comprehensive and detailed picture of the dynamic network structure of the global economy. How economies are linked, specialize, and grow (or not) is captured in the way global value chains (GVCs) are put together. This report is about a huge contribution to our deepening understanding of what the global economy really means and how it is changing. The report helpfully distinguishes elements of an economy that are tradable and the large set that are non-tradable. Clearly the tradables set is expanding with the support of enabling technology. The report argues that connectivity in the networks that define the evolving architecture of GVCs is important. This Global Value Chain Development Report is the result of intensive and detailed work in assembling and analyzing data on the structure of economies and on how they are linked. It creates a much clearer picture of evolving patterns of independence. It also presents a much clearer picture of comparative advantage.  See Less -