In the field of economics, a vast literature has attributed the rise of global value chains to globalization-related forces such as declining costs of transportation, improvements in communications technology, and institutional and policy reforms in developing countries. Through an in-depth...

China's emergence as a key player in the global electronics industry has ignited concerns among its East Asian neighbors. Upper and middle-income economies fear that China's rise is hollowing out their electronics industrial base. Lower-income economies worry that they cannot compete with...

In this paper, we make use of a unique world electronics production data set to assess China's upgrading trajectory in the global electronics industry. Contrary to existing studies, we find no evidence that China's electronics production activities are more sophisticated than one would expect...

The surge of oil prices in recent years has led to speculation that rising transportation costs could end the period of dramatic world trade growth in the words of Rubin (2009), …Your world is going to get a whole lot smaller. Using data from China's Customs Statistics, we examine the impact of...

Previous studies have argued that global value chains (GVCs) have increased the sensitivity of trade to foreign income shocks. This may occur either because GVC trade is concentrated in durable goods industries, which are known to have high income elasticities (a composition effect), or because,...