Services play a role in global value chains in many ways, similar to goods. But services deserve special attention because of how they are transacted, how they affect downstream sectors, how they are regulated, and how international cooperation can contribute to integrating national markets....

Several new statistical tools and analytical frameworks have been developed recently to measure countries' and sectors' involvement in global value chains. Such wealth of methodologies reflects that different empirical questions call for distinct accounting methods, along with different levels...

This paper exploits information from two different datasets to provide a novel and multi-dimensional picture of the engagement of all sub-Saharan African countries in global value chains (GVCs). It documents in detail the nature of the underlying data and the way it is used to construct several...

The spread of global value chains (GVCs) has given rise to new statistical tools, the Inter-Country Input-Output tables and new analytical frameworks aimed at properly identifying production linkages between and within economies. However, several important questions remain unaddressed. This...

In 2016, the Government of India proposed negotiations on an agreement to facilitate trade in services to complement the 2013 World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement in goods. The proposal did not find much support, but plurilateral talks launched in 2017 on various policy areas...

This paper presents new data on the content of preferential trade agreements. The data contain detailed information on the 18 policy areas most frequently covered in preferential trade agreements, focusing on the stated objectives, substantive commitments, and other aspects such as transparency,...

Short-cycle higher education programs last between one and three years and capture approximately 20 percent of the world's higher education enrollment. Although they hold great promise for the skilling, up-skilling, and re-skilling of the workforce in the current world of work, little is known...

Africa's linkages in manufacturing global value chains are reasonably high compared with other developing regions. Still, linkage rates have declined steeply in recent years in non-resource rich countries in the region although they have increased sharply in countries that are rich in natural...

China has defied the declining trend in domestic content in exports in many countries. This paper studies China's rising domestic content in exports using firm- and customs transaction-level data. The approach embraces firm heterogeneity and hence reduces aggregation bias. The study finds that...

The emergence of global value chains has opened up new ways to achieve development and industrialization. However, new evidence shows that not all countries have gained from participating in global value chains, and that country-specific characteristics matter for economic upgrading in global...