In the last decades in particular, national governments as well as development agencies and international organizations have increasingly turned to participation in global value chains (GVCs) as a development strategy. However, whether the positive development effects of integration are large...

The catching-up of countries in the Global South to productivity levels and living standards of the Global North is the exception. There are two main economic explanations for this. First, developing countries are pushed to low-tech-labor-intensive productions and tasks in global value chains....