The emergence of global supply chains, that is the organization of production processes in factories that are part of a network of suppliers located in different countries and specialized in specific production phases, brings about a number of major changes in the way the global economy works...

Backward and forward vertical integrations both shape the organization of Global Value Chains (GVCs). Yet, many studies make the unrealistic assumption that integration decisions are binary and one-directional, i.e., companies make the integration decision only once and they can go either...