The massive globalization of production led by large firms in industrialized countries, combined with the policy shift in developing countries toward export-oriented growth, has meant that economic development has increasingly become synonymous with “economic upgrading” within global...

We implement a “parsimonious” and operational approach to measuring economic and social upgrading over 1990-2009 in four global value chains -- apparel, mobile phones, agrofoods and tourism -- based entirely on data published by international institutions. Economic upgrading is defined as a...