IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unm/unumer/2015027.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Technological upgrading in global value chains and clusters and their contribution to sustaining economic growth in low and middle income economies

Author

Listed:
  • Kaplinsky, Raphael

    (UNU-MERIT)

Abstract

This paper begins with a discussion of the role played by upgrading in the promotion of sustainable growth. Upgrading is discussed in two different contexts, that of industrial clusters and that of global value chains (GVCs). Drawing on global and African experiences, the paper addresses the upgrading agenda required to enable dynamic clusters to meet both domestic needs and progressively also needs in external markets. In the discussion of value chains, the paper distinguishes between vertically specialised and additive GVCs and shows how the upgrading agenda necessarily varies between these two families of GVCs. The paper concludes by briefly discussing two issues. The first is to distinguish between the upgrading agenda which is essential for sustaining economic growth and that which addresses the inclusivity (and thus sustainability) of the growth path. The second addresses the circumstances in which it may be possible to pursue these varied upgrading strategies simultaneously.

Suggested Citation

  • Kaplinsky, Raphael, 2015. "Technological upgrading in global value chains and clusters and their contribution to sustaining economic growth in low and middle income economies," MERIT Working Papers 2015-027, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    • Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2015027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2015/wp2015-027.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giovanni Andrea Cornia, 2012. "Inequality Trends and their Determinants: Latin America over 1990-2010," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-009, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Yuqing Xing & Neal Detert, 2011. "How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People's Republic of China:," Aussenwirtschaft, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economics Research, vol. 66(03), pages 339-350, September.
    3. Kaplinsky, Raphael, 2010. "The role of standards in global value chains," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5396, The World Bank.
    4. Rodrik, Dani, 2004. "Industrial Policy for the Twenty-First Century," CEPR Discussion Papers 4767, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Syrquin, M. & Chenery, H.B., 1989. "Patterns Of Development, 1950 To 1983," World Bank - Discussion Papers 41, World Bank.
    6. Ricardo, David, 1821. "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, edition 3, number ricardo1821.
    7. Yuqing Xing & Neal Detert, 2010. "How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People’s Republic of China," Trade Working Papers 23128, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    8. Giovanni Andrea Cornia, 2012. "Inequality Trends and their Determinants: Latin America over 1990-2010," Working Papers - Economics wp2012_02.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    9. Judith Fessehaie & Mike Morris, 2013. "Value Chain Dynamics of Chinese Copper Mining in Zambia: Enclave or Linkage Development?," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 25(4), pages 537-556, September.
    10. Smith, Adam, 1776. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number smith1776.
    11. Adewuyi, Adeolu O. & Ademola Oyejide, T., 2012. "Determinants of backward linkages of oil and gas industry in the Nigerian economy," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 452-460.
    12. Terheggen, Anne, 2011. "The tropical timber industry in Gabon: a forward linkages approach to industrialisation," MPRA Paper 37976, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Schmitz, Hubert, 1995. "Small shoemakers and fordist giants: Tale of a supercluster," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 9-28, January.
    14. Kaplan, David, 2012. "South African mining equipment and specialist services: Technological capacity, export performance and policy," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 425-433.
    15. Roberta Rabellotti & Anna Carabelli & Giovanna Hirsch, 2007. "Italian Industrial Districts on the Move: Where Are They Going?," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 19-41, July.
    16. Hirschman,Albert O., 1981. "Essays in Trespassing," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521282437, January.
    17. Yuqing Xing & Neal Detert, 2010. "How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People’s Republic of China," Trade Working Papers 23280, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    18. Kaplinsky, Raphael, 1993. "Export Processing Zones in the Dominican Republic: Transforming manufactures into commodities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 21(11), pages 1851-1865, November.
    19. Fessehaie, Judith, 2012. "What determines the breadth and depth of Zambia's backward linkages to copper mining? The role of public policy and value chain dynamics," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 443-451.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Figueiredo, Paulo N. & Piana, Janaina, 2016. "When “one thing (almost) leads to another”: A micro-level exploration of learning linkages in Brazil's mining industry," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 405-414.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raphael Kaplinsky & Mike Morris, 2016. "Thinning and Thickening: Productive Sector Policies in The Era of Global Value Chains," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 28(4), pages 625-645, September.
    2. Morris, Mike & Kaplinsky, Raphael & Kaplan, David, 2012. "“One thing leads to another”—Commodities, linkages and industrial development," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 408-416.
    3. Jovanović, Miroslav N., 2019. "The Supply Chain Economy: How Far does it Spread in Space and Time?," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 72(4), pages 393-452.
    4. Daqing Yao & John Whalley, 2015. "The China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone: Background, Developments and Preliminary Assessment of Initial Impacts," NBER Working Papers 20924, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Dreier, Silas & Liu, Wan-hsin, 2023. "Technological sophistication made in China? New insights from Germany's evaluation of COVID-19 antigen rapid tests," Kiel Working Papers 2261, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Willem Thorbecke, 2013. "Investigating China's Disaggregated Processed Exports: Evidence that Both the RMB and Exchange Rates in Supply Chain Countries Matter," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(10), pages 1245-1260, October.
    7. Murat A. Yülek, 2017. "On the Middle Income Trap, the Industrialization Process and Appropriate Industrial Policy," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 325-348, September.
    8. Lili Yan Ing & Wei Tian & Maiojie Yu, "undated". "China’s Processing Trade and Value Chains," Working Papers DP-2018-02, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).
    9. Helble, Matthias & Ngiang, Boon-Loong, 2016. "From global factory to global mall? East Asia’s changing trade composition and orientation," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 37-47.
    10. Shen, Leilei & Silva, Peri, 2018. "Value-added exports and U.S. local labor markets: Does China really matter?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 479-504.
    11. Cheryl Xiaoning Long & Galina Hale & Hirotaka Miura, 2014. "Productivity Spillovers from FDI in the People's Republic of China: A Nuanced View," Asian Development Review, MIT Press, vol. 31(2), pages 77-108, September.
    12. Meng, Bo & Ye, Ming, 2022. "Smile curves in global value chains: Foreign- vs. domestic-owned firms; the U.S. vs. China," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 15-29.
    13. Aichele, Rahel & Heiland, Inga, 2018. "Where is the value added? Trade liberalization and production networks," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 130-144.
    14. Tong Zhao & Zhijie Song & Tianjiao Li, 2018. "Effect of innovation capacity, production capacity and vertical specialization on innovation performance in China's electronic manufacturing: Analysis from the supply and demand sides," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-23, July.
    15. Xing, Yuqing, 2014. "Measuring Value Added in the People’s Republic of China’s Exports: A Direct Approach," ADBI Working Papers 493, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    16. Evert Meijers & Martijn Burger & Masahisa Fujita & Nobuaki Hamaguchi, 2016. "Supply chain internationalization in East Asia: Inclusiveness and risks," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(1), pages 81-100, March.
    17. Xing, Yuqing, 2012. "Processing trade, exchange rates and China's bilateral trade balances," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 540-547.
    18. Suder, Gabriele & Liesch, Peter W. & Inomata, Satoshi & Mihailova, Irina & Meng, Bo, 2015. "The evolving geography of production hubs and regional value chains across East Asia: Trade in value-added," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 404-416.
    19. Shoji Akino & Nobuhiko Yamanaka & Yawen Huang & Wataru Kikuchi, 2023. "Global Value Chain Governance and Power Asymmetry between Lead Firms and Suppliers: Case of Apple’s Global Value Chain and the State of Its Governance," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 16(9), pages 1-58, February.
    20. Kawamata, Takahiro, 2022. "Social Informatics Turns under Geo-Political Economic Dynamics: The Battle for Technological Hegemony and Soft Power in the 5G Era," 31st European Regional ITS Conference, Gothenburg 2022: Reining in Digital Platforms? Challenging monopolies, promoting competition and developing regulatory regimes 265641, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Global Value Chains; GVC; Industrial Clusters; Upgrading; Africa; Additive Value Chains; Vertically Specialised Value Chains;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F60 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2015027. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ad Notten (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/meritnl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.