An Elementary Theory of Global Supply Chains

Su Wang, Jonathan Vogel and Arnaud Costinot
Additional contact information
Su Wang: MIT

No 95, 2011 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: This paper develops an elementary theory of global supply chains. In spite of its simplicity, our theory is consistent with a number of stylized facts and able to deliver a rich set of predictions regarding how vertical specialization shapes the interdependence of nations. Among other things, our analysis predicts that poor countries have higher shares of primary production and assembly in value added, and provides a novel rationale for why rich countries both tend to trade relatively more with other rich countries and export and import goods with higher unit values. Our analysis also demonstrates that observing a country "moving up the chain"--an observation which is often taken as good news among policy makers--does not necessarily signal an improvement in its relative competitiveness and may very well be associated with a welfare loss. Our results point towards the importance of modeling the sequential nature of production for understanding the consequences of technological changes in developing and developed countries on their trading partners worldwide.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: An Elementary Theory of Global Supply Chains (2013)
Working Paper: An Elementary Theory of Global Supply Chains (2011)
Working Paper: An Elementary Theory of Global Supply Chains (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed011:95

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2011 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics Society for Economic Dynamics Marina Azzimonti Department of Economics Stonybrook University 10 Nicolls Road Stonybrook NY 11790 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Zimmermann ().