One of the main obstacles for successful economic development is the formation of institutional traps, inefficient yet stable norms of behaviour. Domination of barter exchange, arrears, corruption and black market activities are examples of institutional traps that have hampered reforms in...

Global value chain literature has proposed alternative forms of governance in explaining the global structure of industries and their dynamics. Despite the interest of those studies on how lead firms organize manufacturing activities at the global level, this framework has not been used to...

Global forest product value chains are increasingly subject to regulatory requirements, such as legality and sustainability certification. For African forest products, a shift in the export destinations of forest products towards China, the leading timber product manufacturer, has raised...

The gains of a country from participating in global value chains (GVCs) will depend on the productive activities taking place in its jurisdiction and their linkages to the domestic economy. Lead firms’ decision on where to locate and how to coordinate production activities is influenced, among...

Expansion of global trade has been heralded as a great boon for agriculture. However, benefits of such expansion has been seen by some quarters as inequitable due to the role of large agribusiness firms and conglomerates. This study synthesizes existing research on the market structure of...

A country's exports of goods and services are the yardstick against which the external competitiveness of its economy is generally measured. However while in the past the export basket largely comprised goods and services produced by the exporting country, this is less the case nowadays. Two of...

Expansion of global trade has been heralded as a great boon for agriculture. However, benefits of such expansion has been seen by some quarters as inequitable due to the role of large agribusiness firms and conglomerates. This study synthesizes existing research on the market structure of...

From a rising share in the global semiconductor market in the 1990s, which peaked at 7.7 percent in 1999, the standing of the Philippines has since weakened with shares declining to four percent in 2005 and 2.5 percent in 2012. Heavy reliance of the Philippine semiconductor industry on foreign...