Daria Taglioni is Research Manager, Trade and International Integration, Development Research Group. She joined the World Bank Group in 2011 as Senior Trade Economist in the International Trade Department of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (PREM). Since then, she has held various positions and roles, including Team-Task Lead for the World Development Report 2020, Principal Economist in the International Finance Corporation, and World Bank’s Global Lead on Global Value Chains. Previously, she worked as Senior Economist at the European Central Bank (ECB) and as Economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). She has published in the American Economic Review, Journal of International Economics, and other scholarly journals. Her work has been featured in international media outlet such as the New York Times and Forbes. She authored various books on international trade. She is Italian and holds a PhD in International Economics from the Graduate Institute, Geneva.
It is generally accepted that a “global chain”—orchestrated by a lead firm—is the relevant unit of analysis for research on contemporary global industries. However, our research shows that value chains (GVCs) and supply chains (GSCs) are only segments of the massively complex “ecosystem of ecosystems” that produce mobile phone handsets. To define a broader field for analysis, we characterize the industry as a massively modular ecosystem, or MME. The plethora of modular linkages that characterize MMEs, enabled by a multiplicity of shared standards, that enables the phenomenal increases in scale, complexity and product functionality that we document in this industry. The research presented in this paper reveals three paradoxes in MMEs: 1) they allow for extremely complex products to be produced at scale, unlike more traditional industries; 2) they simultaneously feature high levels of market concentration at the level of complex sub-systems and components, and market fragmentation at the level of the industry overall; and 3) they are geographically clustered, but industries as a whole are geographically dispersed. This leads us to a fourth, policy-related paradox: MMEs generate pressures for decoupling when placed under stress, but the same set of circumstances also create strong strategic and political pressures for maintaining the business relationships and institutions that have come to underpin global integration.
This paper studies global trade responses to the US-China trade war. It estimates the tariff impacts on product-level exports to the US, China, and rest of world. On average, countries decreased exports to China and increased exports to the US and rest of world. Most countries export products that complement the US and substitute China, and a subset operate along downward-sloping supplies. Heterogeneity in responses, rather than specialization, drives export variation across countries. Surprisingly, global trade increased in the products targeted by tariffs. Thus, despite ending the trend towards tariff reductions, the trade war did not halt global trade growth.
World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains
October 2019
This report examines whether there is still a path to development through global value chains (GVCs) and trade. It concludes that technological change is at this stage more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms to promote GVC participation, industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies, and all countries revive multilateral cooperation.
How exposed are countries and sectors to GVC risks? GVC participation matters for answering this question. Standard approaches either overstate the degree of backward integration or underestimate the involvement of some industries, especially services, in Global Value Chain (GVC) activity. To correct these biases, this paper proposes a novel comprehensive method to measure GVC participation using Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) linkages in both trade and output and shows that these improvements in methodology matter from a macroeconomic perspective. GVC integration, as measured by the indicators, decreases the exposure to domestic shocks and increases that to global shocks. The paper also finds that exposure to shocks is complex: in most countries and sectors, output is simultaneously exposed to supply and demand shocks. This two-sided exposure suggests that disruptions may not be easily managed by unilateral policy attempts at forcing a reorganization of buyers-seller relationships.
This report offers a strategic framework, analytical tools, and policy options to ensure internationalization of production processes also address development challenges. The conceptualization of GVCs makes it easier for policymakers and practitioners to identify the key objectives of GVC participation and select suitable economic strategies to achieve them.
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