This paper unveils a systematic pattern in the People's Republic of China's (PRC) processing trade. In a cross-section of the PRC's provinces, the average distance traveled by processing imports (import distance) is negatively correlated with the average distance traveled by processing exports...

The core idea behind the paper is that trade policy matters for the organization of global value chains, a notion largely neglected by economists but which has important implications for our understanding of trade and the international transmission of trade policy shocks. We develop a...

Vertical specialization is one of the most notable trends in the international organization of production (Hummels, Jun and Yi, 2001; Yi, 2003; Desai, 2009). Thanks to reductions in communication, transportation and other trade costs, multinational firms are slicing up their value chains and are...