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...

Functional upgrading occurs when a firm acquires more sophisticated functions within an existing value chain. In this paper, we analyze if there is evidence of this type of upgrading in China's export processing regime by investigating dynamics in the relative prevalence of Import & Assembly...

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,...

Supply chain disruptions did not cause the shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essential goods that the world experienced in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, the cause was manufacturers’ inability to step up production of PPEs to meet the demands of the...