Comments by Deborah Swenson,  on The Global Value Chain and the Competitiveness of Asian Countries

Deborah Swenson: The organizations and activities of global value chains (GVCs) are of great policy interest because of their effects on the global location of employment. Although it is widely understood that decreases in trade and communication costs in recent decades have accelerated incentives for the relocation of production activities, a scarcity of relevant data has limited the ability of researchers and policymakers to comprehensively track the detailed economic features of this reorganization. For example, to gain insight into these questions economists have adopted a number of measurement approaches based on the movement of internationally traded products. Here, tracking items that are identified as intermediate inputs reveals information about the organization of global production. Additional changes have been identified through changes in firm investment as firms have changed the geographic placement of their affiliate operations. Because countries that contribute to production within GVCs only contribute a portion of value-added contained...