Yanrui Wu agreed with Prema-chandra Athukorala on the policy relevance of the paper.
The view that production networks have reached a saturation policy is now often referred to in the policy debate on prospects for export-led development strategy. The findings of this paper help dispel this pessimistic view. Wu wanted to know why world trade in primary product trade is declining.
Keun Lee suggested that the authors use value-added data; Wu agreed with this suggestion. Athukorala argued that many researchers have used OECD value-added trade data blindly. He said this is not relevant for analyzing opportunities for export-oriented industrialisation. GPN expansion means value-added is declining everywhere. What is relevant is volume fact. Value-added is endogenous to the production process. For instance, President Park Chun Hee focused export incentives on gross exports, not value-added exports. Fukunari Kimura replied that value-added data have certain limitations and is not available at a level...