The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the relationship between financial development and income inequality. Theoretically, there are grounds for both a positive and negative relationship between the two variables. Our main finding is that financial development contributes...

In a highly integrated global economy, linkages of domestic sectors to global trade measure an economy's ability to gain from participating in global value chains. On the other hand, the strength of domestic linkages can provide insights on an economy's cross-industry trade and extent of the...

Export diversification, or the breadth of exports of an economy, is increasingly seen as a means of accelerating economic growth, mitigating instability due to price, demand, and exchange rate fluctuations, and stabilizing earnings from exports in the long run. As economies integrate into global...

This paper argues that the single most important factor that explains East Asia's development success was its fast structural transformation toward industrialization, manufacturing in particular. Workers moved out of agriculture into manufacturing, and the sector diversified and upgraded its...

Global value chains (GVCs) have been a vehicle for job creation in developing Asia, but there is mounting concern that more sophisticated and cost-effective technology could displace workers through automation or reshoring of production. We use the demand-based input-output approach in Reijnders...

The gains of a country from participating in global value chains (GVCs) will depend on the productive activities taking place in its jurisdiction and their linkages to the domestic economy. Lead firms' decision on where to locate and how to coordinate production activities is influenced, among...

The world's trade landscape is being shaped by global value chains, which present new opportunities as well as challenges to developing countries. While large developing countries are leveraging the benefits of global value chains, smaller economies have been less successful. In this paper we...

The collapse of trade during the great recession of 2008–2009 has raised the question of whether the rise of global value chains (GVCs) has increased or accelerated the international transmission of business cycle shocks. In this paper, we empirically investigate two channels through which a...