Ecologically unequal exchange and uneven development patterns along global value chains

Jeffrey Althouse, Louison Cahen-Fourot, Bruno Carballa-Smichowski, Cédric Durand and Steven Knauss
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Bruno Carballa Smichowski

World Development, 2023, vol. 170, issue C

Abstract: This paper relates participation in global value chains (GVCs) to development patterns and ecologically unequal exchange (EUE). We conduct a principal components analysis and a clustering analysis along six dimensions (GVC participation, GVC value capture, investment, socioeconomic development, domestic environmental impact and international environmental balance) for 133 countries between 1995 and 2015. We find three social, ecological, productive development and GVC insertion patterns: “curse of GVC marginalization”, “ecologically perverse upgrading” and “reproduction of the core”. While our results confirm the asymmetry in ecological degradation between high-income and low-income economies shown by EUE, it refines and nuances these findings. We argue that environmentalasymmetries are driven in large part by differences in how countries articulate within GVCs. Countries with a higher capacity to capture value from GVC participation (“reproduction of the core”) are able to displace environmental impacts to countries facing a trade-off between upgrading in GVCs and ecological degradation (“ecologically perverse upgrading”). Marginalization from GVCs, mitigates the impact of ecologically unequal exchange but constitutes a barrier to socio-economic benefits. Moreover, the lack of diffusion of more ecologically-efficient processes through GVCs has a negative impact on domestic ecological degradation for countries of the “curse of GVC marginalization” group.

Keywords: Global value chains; Ecologically unequal exchange; Development patterns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F18 O11 Q27 Q37 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X23001262
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Ecologically unequal exchange and uneven development patterns along global value chains (2023)
Working Paper: Ecologically unequal exchange and uneven development patterns along global value chains (2022)
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:eee:wdevel:v:170:y:2023:i:c:s0305750x23001262

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106308

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().