This technical report was written by Stacey Frederick for the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) Business Environment Working Group. It examines how the business environment can support positive integration and upgrading of formal firms in global value chains (GVCs). It addresses the role of the business environment and reform regarding attracting lead firms and supporting positive effects from investment, increasing the quality and supply of domestic firms, facilitating linkages between foreign and domestic firms, and supporting integration into new chains via regional trade agreements. These are discussed in this report as they relate to factors affecting competitiveness in GVCs.
Stacey Frederick and Jack Daly look at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry in developing countries and provide insights from global value chain (GVC) analysis as in this op-ed for Trade and Development News managed by the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF).
Abstract: Global value chain research has evolved over the last two decades from a theoretical framework to an applied research approach widely used in industrial organization and development studies to address a myriad of research questions. A key element of conducting such research is establishing a clear, repeatable process to identify and describe the stakeholders and concepts of the analysis across a range of industries and topics. The global value chain (GVC) research approach has two main steps: value chain mapping (identifying who and where) and value chain analysis (the what and why). This chapter focuses on value chain mapping – the process of identifying the structural elements along the value chain, including firms, workers, activities, products, and places. It includes steps and data sources to define the scope of an industry using a combination of international standardized classification systems and insights from existing research and fieldwork. The general approach is presented along with industry-specific examples of how the process has been applied in GVC studies. This chapter was written by Stacey Frederick and appears as Chapter 1 in the Handbook on Global Value Chains.
This article is related to research conducted as part of the collaboration between KIET and GVCC. The article was published in the March/April 2019 KIET Industrial Economic Review, Volume 24, Issue Number 2, p. 14-27.
Duke GVCC’s study into Pakistan’s medical devices industry was sponsored by the World Bank.
This Duke GVCC study on Pakistan’s apparel industry was sponsored by the World Bank in order to understand potential upgrading strategies to enhance the country’s competitiveness in the GVC. It begins by providing an overview of the apparel GVC to present a clear understanding of the scope of the industry, how markets are structured and how changing distribution of demand and supply destinations and lead firm organization alter structural dynamics in the chain. It then analyzes the industry within Pakistan, first detailing the country’s position in the chain by looking at its firm profile, backward linkages, product profile and end markets. The internal organization of the industry is then outlined as well as recent examples of upgrading and the factors that influence the labor environment. After assessing the country’s advantages and constraints, it provides short case studies on Vietnam and Sri Lanka’s experiences in the industry. The report concludes with potential upgrading strategies for the Pakistan in the industry.
This GVCC report first provides an overview of the offshore services GVC to present a clear understanding of the scope of the industry, how markets are structured and how changing distribution of demand and supply destinations alter structural dynamics in the chain. It then analyzes the industry within Pakistan, detailing the country’s position in the global market as well as the internal organization of the industry and the human capital status. After assessing the advantages and constraints observed in Pakistan, it looks to India and Uruguay for comparative case studies, detailing the lessons learned for Pakistan. The report concludes by outlining potential upgrading strategies to enhance the country’s competitiveness in the global market. Across the entire report, focus is placed on the opportunities than Pakistan can leverage in the export market, excluding the domestic market space.
This joint report by the GVC Center and KIET builds on recommendations from the first project to explore opportunities in technology-related services. This report: describes and defines the digital economy, provides a case study that illustrates how Industry 4.0 impacts the capital equipment GVC and provides analysis of the activities taking place in different countries including the US, China, India, Singapore and Korea. To identify entry and upgrading opportunities in this field, 28 company case studies of global information technology (IT) lead firms were completed to identify common strategies of existing global leaders.
Duke GVCC presented The Digital Economy & Global Value Chains: Implications for Korea in Seoul, Korea on December 4, 2018 at the KIET-Duke GVCC seminar on Upgrading Globalization for Innovation Growth: Expansion of Digital Companies in GVCs and its Implications. The presentation provides an overview of the results of our recent project KIET on the digital economy and GVCs.
This section highlights work with a specific focus on global value chain (GVC) entry and upgrading.
While cruise tourism remains a small niche within the broader tourism industry—its 24 million passengers constitute just 2% of worldwide travelers—it is a critical economic activity in the Caribbean. More than two-thirds of the tourists in the region are cruise-ship passengers. Although cruise ship tourism is not as lucrative as other forms—tourists on cruise ships spend as little as one-tenth the consumption of stay-over visitors—it still accounts for an aggregated US$3.1 billion in expenditures in 2014-15 and supported roughly 75,000 jobs. St. Lucia conforms to this regional trend. Cruise tourism has a large footprint on the island, contributing 63% of the 1.05 million tourists who traveled to the island in 2017. Although there has been some fluctuation, the number of cruise arrivals has trended higher in more recent years. Nonetheless, there are still some weaknesses in the sector, most immediately the low impressions of St. Lucia’s cruise tourism products as well as the lack of strategic agenda. This report identifies some of the most prominent constraints and outlines potential upgrading strategies to boost passenger expenditures.
