With the steady growth of global value chains (GVCs), each country's trade now has a more complex relationship with the international division of labor. We decompose the employment effects of a country's trade into five components, specifically the labour content (1) in exports, (2) in imports,...

We adopt a ‘parsimonious' approach to measuring economic and social upgrading over 1990-2009 in four global value chains – apparel, mobile phones, agrofoods and tourism – based entirely on data published by international institutions. Economic upgrading is defined as a combination of...

The paper discusses the extent of the structural change and its causes and implications for policy and theory. According to the paper, structural change is due to the rise of trade in intermediate goods. It emphasizes theories to be more focused on the competitive struggle of absolute advantage...

This book brings together the work of international economist, labour economists and sociologists in a far-reaching study of global production networks and the challenges they pose for developing country workers. A number of both empirical and theoretical questions are addressed and answers are...

Vertical specialization is a measure of the import content of exports. Given the widely recognized importance of trade in tasks and global production networks, vertical specialization has recently gained the attention of international trade researchers and policy makers. In this note, we use...