Documents Flaig, Dorothee 2 results

"The rapid growth of global value chains (GVCs) has been an important driver of globalisation during the past decades. But the international fragmentation of production appears to have lost momentum and GVCs seem to have stalled in recent years. The world economy is facing a number of structural shifts that may dramatically change the outlook of GVCs in the coming years. The empirical evidence evaluating the potential impact of these shifts however largely lags behind, which makes these discussions somewhat speculative. By describing how these shifts will likely evolve over the next 10 to 15 years and calculating their effects on global production and trade, the scenarios in this paper offers new - empirically funded - insights on the future of GVCs."

"Global trade imbalances narrowed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. They have remained at a lower level but are still of concern to policy makers because of the risks they pose to individual economies, as well as globally. However, the ultimate causes of these imbalances are not fully clear. Current account positions reflect the gap between national saving and investment, which are in turn affected by policy distortions, including in trade policy. Simulations of the OECD's METRO model show liberalisation of existing trade distortions would modestly narrow aggregate trade imbalances in the medium term for some countries. Reducing tariffs, non-tariff measures and the combined market access and productivity-enhancing effects of pro-competitive measures in services all have some rebalancing potential. Liberalisation would also offer economically significant income gains for all countries. By contrast, narrowing trade imbalances using trade restrictions would come at disproportionately high economic costs for all countries."