Prema-chandra Athukorala: The purpose of this paper is to examine whether global production networks (GPNs) in East Asia have run out of steam, in the context of the debate on global trade slowdown. A key strand of this debate, which is based on circumstantial evidence or pure speculation, is that trade slowdown in recent years was partly underpinned by sluggish growth of trade based on global production sharing—that is, trade in parts and components and final assembly taking place within GPNs (GPN trade). As far as I know, this is the first systematic empirical analysis of this issue. It is an innovative contribution that helps broaden our understanding of the East Asian growth dynamism and the relevance of global production sharing as a mechanism of global economic integration for latecomers to export-oriented industrialization.
The inferences in the previous literature on global trade slowdown has solely focused on “trade to world...