The following report examines the importance of industrial robotics as a driver of production and trade quality. In an attempt to peer below the aggregate surface of traditional industrial GVC indicators, the paper relies on 6 digit product level trade data to assess the extent to which...

The increase of emerging market economies in international trade and rapid rise in global trade intensity over the past three decades has been accompanied by growing, regionally concentrated, discontent with trade in advanced OECD countries. One of the main concerns is the negative effects of...

Productivity in Russia has fallen steadily over the past 15 years. This paper explores micro-level data to understand the contribution of individual firms to aggregate productivity. Overall, firm-level data corroborate the decline in aggregate productivity and a widening productivity gap against...

This study investigates the role of countries’ skills endowment for comparative advantage. It tests the theoretical model of Ohnsorge and Trefler (2007) who argue that it is the bundling of various skills at the worker level and their joint distribution that matter for trade specialisation....

This study proposes a taxonomy of sectors according to the extent to which they have gone digital. The taxonomy accounts for some of the key facets of the digital transformation, and recognises that sectors differ in their development and adoption of the most advanced “digital” technologies,...

The Chinese economy has been undergoing fundamental structural changes since the start of reforms in 1978. An increasing number of farmers first got engaged in off-farm activities and then started to migrate to cities in the 1990s in search of jobs. Such movement of labour from less to more...

This paper explores the productivity impact of trade, product market and financial market policies over the last decade in China – a fast growing country where, despite significant reform action, regulatory stance remains still far from OECD standards. The paper makes a critical distinction...