Market selection in global value chains

Philipp Mundt, Uwe Cantner, Hiroyasu Inoue, Ivan Savin and Simone Vannuccini

No 170, BERG Working Paper Series from Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group

Abstract: The idea that market selection promotes survival and expansion of the 'fittest' producersis a key principle underlying theories of competition. Yet, despite its intuitive appeal, thehypothesis that companies with superior productivity also exhibit higher growth lacks em-pirical support. One reason for this is that companies are not 'islands' that produce goodsand services in isolation but depend on their suppliers in value chains, implying that exces-sive growth can also originate in the superior productive performance of these value-chainpartners. Neglecting these dependencies in empirical tests of the selection hypothesis leadsto measurement errors and may impair the identification of competition for the market.In this paper, we use data from the World Input-Output Database to capture these globalvalue-chain relationships in an empirical test for market selection, studying competitionbetween country-sectors for a global market share in different economic activities. Com-pared to the conventional view that focuses on individual productivities, our value-chainperspective on the productivity-growth nexus provides stronger empirical support for mar-ket selection. This suggests that the scope of selection reaches beyond the level of individualproducers and requires a systemic analysis of production networks. Our findings contributeto a better understanding of the determinants of selection in competitive environments andalso represent a novel application of global value-chain data.

Keywords: competition; country-sector dynamics; input-output analysis; replicator dynamics; productivity decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C67 D22 L14 L16 L20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ind, nep-int and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:bamber:170

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