The Relationship Between Global Value Chains and Productivity

We review the evidence linking Global Value Chains (GVCs) and productivity. GVCs are a key feature of the world economy, with production increasingly fragmented across borders. However research has uncovered that GVCs are not primarily global in nature, but focused around regional clusters of production, and services and multinationals (MNEs) play a key role in these networks. A broad literature using both industry and firm-level data has uncovered that participating in GVCs can stimulate productivity growth through a myriad of channels. These include the potential for firm specialisation in core tasks, access to imported inputs, knowledge spillovers from foreign firms and pro-competitive effects of foreign competition. However, there are many potential obstacles to seizing the opportunities for growth. The changing organisation of production across firms and countries emphasises the importance of some well-established policy levers (such as trade policy) as well as some of those previously under-explored (such as domestic service market competition). Embeddedness within GVCs may also expose firms to new sources of risk and affect resilience of economies, as a shock to one part of the supply chain can propagate throughout production networks.