Redes Transnacionales de Producción en la Unión Europea: Economías Centrales VS Periferias Este y Sur

This paper focuses on analyzing the strategy of international fragmentation of production and the evolution of the cross-border networks in the European Union. Specifically, we investigate the role in these networks for the Core economies, South Periphery and East Periphery and for which productions. Using a gravity model for trade in parts and components, our results emphasize the important role of the core EU economies in the processes of fragmentation in the world area, unlike both Peripheries. Factors such as belonging to the EU as well as the geographical and linguistic proximity and the institutional quality closely linked to the business sector favor the establishment and the intensity of the cross-border production chains. Excessive economic differences between countries suppose, for the core EU economies, an obstacle for the functioning of these sharing production networks, whereas for the East and South Periphery those differences suppose an impulse, pointing at the dissimilar profile of these areas (Core and Periphery) in the integration in global networks.