World development under monopoly capitalism

Benjamin Selwyn and Dara Leyden

Chapter 23 in The Elgar Companion to the World Bank, 2024, pp 274-285 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Most of world trade is organized through global value chains (GVCs). The World Bank’s Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains claims that GVCs boost incomes, create better jobs and reduce poverty. It explains the developmental benefits of GVCs from a comparative advantage theory perspective. In this chapter we show how GVCs contradict and invalidate the assumptions upon which comparative advantage theory is constructed. While comparative advantage theory holds that firms interact through arms-length relations, GVCs are characterized by the exercise of significant non-market power by lead firms over their suppliers. We argue that these power relations also explain the deleterious impact of GVCs upon real human development. While the WDR claims that GVCs are developmentally positive, it provides evidence to the contrary - showing how they concentrate wealth, repress incomes, create many bad jobs (low-wage, low-skill, low-security and with poor working conditions), and reproduce new forms of in-work poverty.

Keywords: Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Law - Academic; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781802204780.00036 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
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:elg:eechap:21163_23

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().