Vietnam is at a crossroads. It can grow as an export platform for GVCs, specializing in low value-added assembly functions with industrialization occurring in enclaves with little connection to the broader economy or society; or it can leverage the current wave of growth, enabled and accelerated...

This report's focus is making global value chains (GVCs) more inclusive. To achieve inclusiveness is by overcoming participation constraints for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and facilitation access for Low Income Developing Countries (LIDCs). The underlying assumption is that most firms...

The Service Trade Competitiveness Diagnostic (STDC) Toolkit is part of a larger agenda of trade competitiveness work developed by the World Bank’s International Trade Unit in recent years. Services are a key input in countries’ trade competitiveness, as well as a new source of trade...

This paper reviews Pakistan's recent trade performance, its trade policy and trade costs. Different dimensions of trade performance growth and orientation, diversification and sophistication are assessed, complemented by an in-depth analysis of export dynamics in the period 2001-10 using...

In this paper we take a systematic look at recent trends in global protectionism and at the potential implications of a protectionist backlash for economic growth, using results from the recent economic literature and new model simulations. We find that there has so far been a moderate increase...

This paper investigates the channels through which the global crisis of 2008-2009 spread to economic activity of an emerging, fast growing economy with sound macroeconomic fundamentals. On the basis of Polish firm-level data we find that a number of individual firm characteristics account for a...

Trade is measured on a gross sales basis while GDP is measured on a net sales basis, i.e. value added. The rapid internationalisation of production in the last two decades has meant that gross trade flows are increasingly unrepresentative of the value added flows. This fact has important...

Global trade contracted quickly and severely during the global crisis. This paper, using a unique dataset of French firms, matching together export data with firm-level credit constraints, shows that most of the 2008-2009 trade collapse is accounted by the unprecedented demand shock and by...