Documents Miroudot, Sébastien 8 results

"New evidence is presented on the evolution of global value chains (GVCs) since the Great Financial Crisis. Drawing on novel OECD inter-country input-output tables in previous year's prices, it shows there was no general trend towards deglobalisation in the period up to 2020. The fragmentation of production remained at a historically high level in 2019 and close to the level of 2011, confirming a stabilisation of the depth of global economic integration. Different trends are observed across economies: in the European Union, the import intensity of production grew before the COVID-19 pandemic, while China increasingly relied on domestic inputs. To explain these trends, bilateral trade costs are estimated and their cumulative impact along value chains is then calculated; structural changes and higher uncertainty seem to be the main drivers of increasing cumulative trade costs for some GVCs. To preserve the benefits of GVCs, policy makers should seek to increase the ease of trade and reduce uncertainty."

"This report provides new evidence on the role of services in global value chains (GVCs). With the release of the Trade in Value Added database, it was highlighted that services account for a larger share of world trade than suggested by traditional statistics. But this evidence does not tell the whole story about services in GVCs. In addition to services bought as inputs, there are also services activities within manufacturing firms. Moreover, manufacturing companies increasingly produce and export services either as complements or substitutes to the goods they sell. This shift to services is related to strategies aiming at adding more value and creating a long-term relationship with customers. The report highlights that services inputs, whether domestic or foreign, account for about 37% of the value of manufacturing exports in the sample of countries covered. By adding service activities within manufacturing firms, this share increases to 53% and the overall contribution of services to exports is close to two-thirds. Across countries, between 25% and 60% of employment in manufacturing firms is found in service support functions such as R&D, engineering, transport, logistics, distribution, marketing, sales, after-sale services, IT, management and back-office support. SMEs are also part of this “servicification” and contribute to exports of services bundled with goods."

"This work addresses the role of global value chains (GVCs), workforce skills, ICT, innovation and industry structure in explaining employment levels of routine and non-routine occupations. The analysis encompasses 28 OECD countries over the period 2000-2011. It relies on a new country-specific measure of routine intensity built using individual-level information from the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey, as well as on new industry-level Trade in Value Added (TiVA) indicators of offshoring, domestic outsourcing, and the services content of manufacturing. The results suggest that comparatively higher skills are associated with higher employment in non-routine (NR) and low routine-intensive (LR) occupations. Also, employment in all types of occupations, both routine and non-routine ones, shows to positively relate to innovation, as measured by patents. A generally positive relationship also emerges between employment and the ICT intensity of industries, with the notable exception of jobs in high-routine occupations, where ICTs seemingly displace workers. With respect to offshoring patterns, a positive correlation is observed between the offshoring of inputs and domestic outsourcing with more routine-intensive jobs. Conversely, the offshoring of final assembly in manufacturing leads to the shedding of jobs in NR occupations and a relatively higher service content of manufacturing relates negatively with employment in HR occupations. Taken together, the results point to the existence of complex interactions between the routine content of occupations, skills, technology, industry structure and trade, which do not allow for a neat identification of "winners" and "losers" in a GVC context. While the effects appear heterogeneous across quartiles of routine intensity, a persistent and positive role of skills and innovative output for employment is found across all quartiles of routine intensive occupations."

"Within global value chains (GVCs), services and manufacturing activities are intertwined. This report further investigates the role played by services in GVCs by looking at patterns of specialisation in 23 services industries over the period 2000-2014. Relying on the concept of revealed comparative advantage, it highlights that all countries have a comparative advantage in specific services industries, either in services within manufacturing value chains or in services exported as final products to consumers. A value-added approach is important to analyse the specialisation in services. In addition, there are tangible productivity gains out of this specialisation, as well as gains in terms of employment. Finally, empirical results suggest that services trade restrictiveness negatively affects bilateral flows of service value-added within GVCs. Both domestic reforms and the reduction of barriers in partner countries can benefit services sectors and the activities that rely on services inputs."

"Because of their numerous and large activities across different countries, Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) are believed to be central and dominant actors in the global economy.  In addition, it has been argued that the growing fragmentation of production within global value chains (GVCs) in the past decades is largely driven by MNEs. It is remarkable then that despite their acclaimed importance, empirical evidence on MNEs is not widely available and largely incomplete, with data only available for a subset of OECD economies. Based on the new OECD analytical AMNE database including information on MNEs across 43 industries and countries on a bilateral basis, this paper derives new insights on the importance of MNEs today. As the new database also allows the linking with the OECD TiVA database, the new evidence additionally discusses in detail the trade and investment nexus within GVCs and suggests that MNEs' role in GVCs goes beyond trade and investment policy."

"Global value chains (GVCs) have sharpened the interdependencies between trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). Using a novel micro-level dataset covering about 27 000 corporate relationships of 147 multinational enterprises (MNEs) in 13 sectors, new evidence is provided on how firms organise their production globally by combining trade with investment, and on a range of non-equity, contract-based partnerships. The analysis leads to five stylised facts. First, MNE activities are a combination of trade, FDI and strategic partnerships. All firms rely on a mix of these different types of corporate relationships. Second, the configuration of trade, investment and strategic partnerships varies across sectors, firms and markets. The results highlight considerable firm-level heterogeneity within the same industry and across the different modes of entry. Third, investment performs various functions in GVCs. In addition to traditional forms of FDI such as “market-seeking” or “input-seeking”, investment “in capabilities” or “conglomerate” FDI also account for a relevant share of equity-based relationships. Fourth, support business functions emerge as key building blocks in GVCs, which suggests that policy reforms in transversal services sectors that support all GVCs should merit special attention. Fifth, GVCs display a clear geographical organisation. While domestic corporate relationships may lead to higher volumes of activities, in terms of the number of relationships MNEs have more partners abroad. Moreover, the large majority of GVC interactions take place within OECD countries. Overall, the complex and heterogeneous interlinkages observed in modern firm strategies highlight the importance of ensuring a level playing field for both trade and investment."

"This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on jobs. We combine data on robot adoption and occupations by industry in thirty-seven countries for the period from 2005 to 2015. We exploit differences across industries in technical feasibility – defined as the industry's share of tasks replaceable by robots – to identify the impact of robot usage on employment. The data allow us to differentiate effects by the routine-intensity of employment. We find that a rise in robot adoption relates significantly to a fall in the employment share of routine manual task-intensive jobs. This relation is observed in high-income countries, but not in emerging market and transition economies."

"Disruptions in global supply chains in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic have re-opened the debate on the vulnerabilities associated with production in complex international production networks. To build resilience in supply chains, several authors suggest making them shorter, more domestic, and more diversified. This paper argues that before redesigning global supply chains, one needs to identify the concrete issues faced by firms during the crisis and the policies that can solve them. It highlights that the solutions that have been proposed tend to be disconnected from the conclusions of the supply chain literature, where reshoring does not lead to resilience, and could further benefit from the insights of international business and global value chain scholars. Lastly, the paper discusses the policies that can build resilience at the firm and global levels and the narrative that could replace the current one to reshape the debate on the policy implications of COVID-19 for global supply chains."