https://hdl.handle.net/10419/263 2026-09-30T12:21:21Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/336786 Title: Multinational corporation supplier transparency: A review of msme and developing economy participation in global value chains using corporate social responsibility reporting Authors: Lundquist, Kathryn Abstract: With growing consumer concerns about the environmental and social impacts of their purchases, some multinational corporations (MNCs) have begun publishing lists of their first-tier and other upstream suppliers with varying levels of detail and analysis in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports to increase transparency. Going beyond traditionally used national and international inputoutput datasets, this paper presents a novel dataset and analyzes characteristics of actual global value chain (GVC) participating factories. Drawing from CSR reports of twenty multinationals identified using the Forbes 2000 list of publicly traded MNCs and covering over 10,000 supplying factories in the apparel, accessories, and footwear sectors, it develops summary statistics on supplier location, factory size, and employee gender distribution. The insights offered provide a description of participation in MNC supply chains by firm size, income level, and workforce gender composition- firm-level characteristics that are generally unavailable in official statistics and often accessible only behind paywalls of private information and analytics providers. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/340114 Title: Mapping sectoral trade balances in time: A look at the numbers Authors: Auboin, Marc; Smith, Donal; Mbise, Théo; D'Andrea-Adrian, Barbara; Della Coletta, Fabio Abstract: In this descriptive paper, we focus on the sectoral composition of trade balances and their evolution since the 1970s, through the aggregation of millions of data points for goods and services. We use a "tree" approach, from global to regional, and from regional to sectoral and finally country balances. Balances are examined through the lens of country-world pairs, not bilateral balances, and from various angles: as a share of global and regional GDP, and in value-added terms. We find both elements of stability and change. At the aggregate and regional levels, the story is one of stability. From the mid-1980s onwards, despite some year-to-year variation, we observe an overall stability in the geography and size of aggregate surplus and deficit regions, particularly when scaled by global GDP. This means, for example, that the size of Asia's surpluses as a share of global GDP in 2024 was close to that of 1986. This is equally true of North America's deficits. That said, imbalances have grown during certain periods, mostly between 1976 and 1986, and in the run up to the global financial crisis, and have fallen at other times (1990s, 2010s). As of the mid-2020s they are on the rise, but levels are smaller than at the peak in 2005, pre financial crisis. Changes are mostly at the sector and country level. Machinery/capital goods, and the electronics sector, have become the largest sources of manufacturing trade imbalances. Country-sector pairs show a reallocation of manufacturing surpluses and deficits across countries: while Japan, Germany and Italy accounted for the eight of the ten largest sector surpluses in the mid-1980s. In 2024, China had become the source of three out of the four largest surpluses, substituting Japan in sectors such as machinery and manufactured goods. North America's consistent trade deficits have increasingly reflected manufactured goods, most recently in machinery and electronics. In Europe, pharmaceuticals have replaced machinery as the largest surplus sector. In agri-food, several regions shifted from surplus to deficit positions and vice versa. South America records persistent agri-food surpluses, but with a vastly changed product composition over time. Changes in these sectors should not obscure the fact that mineral fuels (oil and gas) have been, and remain, the single largest source of sectoral imbalances, with China the largest importer. The evolution of services trade balances highlights growing surpluses of Europe and North America. Aside from the recent, and limited, exception of the Middle East, other regions have recorded deficits, in some cases rising ones. Information, communication, and technology services are the fastestgrowing source of surpluses, while intellectual property-related services are the fastest-growing source of deficits. Transport and travel still account for large share of the level of imbalances. Adopting a value-added perspective alters the assessment of global trade balances across regions for both goods and services. This approach makes Europe's goods trade deficit larger and its services surplus smaller. It results in North America's goods trade deficit decreasing and its service trade surplus increasing, a trend which has intensified over time. It also makes Asia's goods trade surplus larger (a visible trend since 1995), while little change is observed for the services trade deficit. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/339598 Title: Impact assessment of the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement Authors: Bekkers, Eddy; Corong, Erwin L.; Smith, Donal; Yu, Roger So; Zhao, Danchen Abstract: This paper presents quantitative projections on the expected economic impact of the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement, which proceeds in three steps. First, we estimate the empirical impact of the host-economy investment facilitation environment on foreign affiliate sales. Second, we map the agreement's mandatory and soft obligations (including best-endeavour) into advalorem equivalent reductions in the costs of multinational production. Third, the economic effects of these policy shocks are projected with a multi-region, multi-sector economic model that explicitly incorporates affiliate sales, foreign direct investment (FDI) and input-output linkages. Our benchmark simulations project that implementation of the IFD Agreement's mandatory obligations would increase global real GDP by 0.8 per cent over the next ten years, driven by a substantial expansion in global FDI flows and foreign affiliate sales. The simulations indicate that developing and low-income economies are expected to see the largest increases in GDP, since they are expected to see the largest improvement in the investment facilitation environment. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/341428 Title: Welfare and cross-border spillover effects of industrial subsidies in general equilibrium Authors: Bekkers, Eddy; Jhunjhunwala, Kirti Abstract: In a simple partial equilibrium setting without externalities industrial subsidies promote manufacturing output in the subsidizing region but harm welfare, whereas spillover effects to welfare in other regions are positive if the country is large. In a general equilibrium model instead the welfare effects are ambiguous, because of pre-existing distortions and general equilibrium terms of trade effects. The aim of this paper is to analyse the welfare and spillover effects of industrial subsidies in a standard general equilibrium quantitative trade model with multiple sectors and intermediate linkages without externalities and profits by exploring counterfactual experiments of the introduction of manufacturing output subsidies. The analysis generates four main findings: (1) welfare falls in most regions raising industrial subsidies except for regions where pre-existing distortions fall sufficiently or where terms of trade rise in other sectors (services); (2) welfare in non-subsidizing regions rises for most regions with variation in these welfare cross-border spillover effects driven by the strength of four effects: an output competition effect, an input competition effects, a downstream effect, an upstream effect; (3) subsidy wars between two global stylized blocs of economies can result in excessively high subsidy rates that are globally inefficient, with outcomes depending on the weight placed on expanding their manufacturing sectors relative to real income; (4) raising industrial subsidies in all regions together has a positive impact on many regions and a negative impact on a relatively small set of regions with the highest initial share of output in manufacturing. However, in the long run welfare can be adversely affected in all regions if there would be positive externalities from specializing in sophisticated sectors, since the upstream effects pull resources out of the sophisticated sectors. 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z