Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/121151 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
FIW Working Paper No. 150
Publisher: 
FIW - Research Centre International Economics, Vienna
Abstract: 
Recent decades have witnessed an increasing integration of developing countries into global value chains (GVCs). This growing participation in global production sharing has raised hopes for economic upgrading within such value chains. However, globalization has intensified international competition, and achieving economic upgrading is not an easy task. Moreover, the social consequences of participating in GVCs are not always positive; however, they have received considerably less attention in the literature. This paper suggests a simple and parsimonious approach to measuring economic and social upgrading (and downgrading) in GVCs. Applying this parsimonious methodology and using quantitative secondary data, we analyze how widespread upgrading has been in four selected manufacturing GVCs: apparel, wood furniture, automotive, and mobile phones. We also investigate to what extent downgrading is part of the reality and undertake a comparative analysis across GVCs, regions and country groups (developing vs. developed countries). We find that the promise of industrial upgrading through participation in GVCs does not materialize for everyone. Indeed, economic upgrading has taken place in just over a quarter of the countries in our sample, among them mainly developing countries. Finally, we examine the relationship between economic performance and social performance in the different GVCs to investigate whether or not economic upgrading is typically associated with social upgrading. While patterns differ across GVCs, we find that economic upgrading is more likely to occur simultaneously with social upgrading than without, and vice versa. Our analysis, thus, suggests that economic upgrading is conducive to, but not sufficient for, social upgrading to occur.
Subjects: 
global value chains
economic upgrading
social upgrading
apparel
automotive
mobile phones
wood furniture
JEL: 
F14
F63
F66
O19
O57
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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