Cultural and institutional differences among nations may result in differences in the ratios of marginal costs of goods in autarchy and thus be the basis of specialization and comparative advantage, as long as these differences are not eliminated by trade. We provide an evolutionary model of...

In this paper, we introduce the fairness approach to efficiency wages into a standard model of international fragmentation. This gives us a theoretical framework in which wage inequality and unemployment rates are co-determined and therefore the public concern can be addressed that international...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the complex role played by technology in affecting the relationship between the participation of EU countries and industries in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and their employment structure over the period 2000-2014. The empirical analysis is based on...

Recent disruptions to global value chains (GVCs) have raised an important question: Can decoupling from GVCs increase a country’s welfare by reducing its exposure to foreign supply shocks? We use a quantitative trade model to simulate GVCs decoupling, defined as increased barriers to global...

This paper proposes a model in which the removal of barriers to trade and factor mobility is associated with endogenous fragmentation of the value-added chain. Fragmentation is the outcome of cost competition - the profit-maximizing choice of cost structure by monopolistically competitive firms....

Fragmentation of the value-added-chain is modeled as the reaction of monopolistically competitive firms to the removal of barriers to trade and factor mobility in an integrated trading environment. Since fragmentation requires high-skilled labor, this form of globalization can induce labor...

This paper develops an elementary theory of global supply chains. We consider a world economy with an arbitrary number of countries, one factor of production, a continuum of intermediate goods, and one final good. Production of the final good is sequential and subject to mistakes. In the unique...

The past decades witnessed big changes in international trade with the rise of global value chains. Some countries, such as China, Poland, and Vietnam rode the tide, while other countries, many in the Africa region, faltered. This paper studies the determinants of participation in global value...

We study how technology adoption and changes in global value chain (GVC) integration jointly affect labor shares and business function specialization in a sample of 14 manufacturing industries in 14 European countries in 1999-2011. Our main contribution is to highlight the indirect effect of...

We study the role of firm heterogeneity and imperfect competition for global production networks and the gains from trade. We develop a quantifiable trade model with two-sided firm heterogeneity, matching frictions, and oligopolistic competition upstream. More productive buyers endogenously...