Danish productivity has grown only weakly over the past two decades, both historically and in relation to other countries, despite sound policies and institutions. At the same time, the country has lost export market shares. Denmark needs to continue its efforts to reap the benefits of...

One of the main stylised facts that has emerged from the recent literature on global value chains is that bilateral trade imbalances in gross terms can differ substantially from those measured in value added terms. However, the factors underlying the extent and sign of the differences between...

Global value chains (GVCs) have grown rapidly over the past several decades. Over the same period, the aggregate value of current account imbalances has risen substantially. This paper looks at whether these developments are related. While there is a sizable literature that has documented the...

The great recession of 2008-2009 resulted in a large fall in trade relative to output. Real trade fell roughly three times more than real GDP in the U.S. and Mexico, and by a factor of five in Canada. The decline in trade and output was particularly large in sectors with high levels of...

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the quality content of Chinese exports and to what extent China imposes a threat to the market positions of advanced economies. While China's export structure is very similar to that of the advanced world, its export unit values are well below...

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the quality content of Chinese exports and to what extent China imposes a threat to the market positions of advanced economies. While China's export structure is very similar to that of the advanced world, its export unit values are well below...

In this paper, the authors use the iPhone as a case to show that even high-tech products invented by United States (US) companies will not increase US exports, but on the contrary exacerbate the US trade deficit. The iPhone contributed US$1.8 billion to the US trade deficit with the People's...

The diffusion of international production networks has challenged the capability of traditional trade statistics to provide an adequate representation of supply and demand linkages among the economies. To address this issue, new statistical tools (the Inter-Country Input-Output tables) and new...

The core subjects of trade theory are the pattern and volume of trade: which goods are traded by which countries, and how much of those goods are traded. The first part of this paper discusses evidence on comparative advantage, with an emphasis on carefully connecting theoretical models with...

Dramatic changes are occurring in the nature of international trade. Production processes increasingly involve a sequential, vertical trading chain stretching across many countries, with each country specializing in particular stages of a good's production sequence. We document a key aspect of...