TY  - RPRT
UR  - http://eprints.imtlucca.it/2753/
TI  - The Similarity of Global Value Chains: a Network-Based Measure
AV  - public
KW  - Keywords: Networks
KW  -  Node Similarity
KW  -  Input-Output Analysis
KW  -  Global Value Chains
KW  -  Vertical Specialization
KW  -  International Trade. 
JEL Codes: C67
KW  -  F10
KW  -  F15
Y1  - 2015/09//
N2  - International trade has been increasingly organized in the form of global value chains
(GVCs) where different stages of production are located in dfferent countries. This
recent phenomenon has substantial consequences for both trade policy design at the
national or regional level and business decision making at the form level. In this paper,
we provide a new method for comparing GVCs across countries and over time. First,
we use the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) to construct both the upstream and
downstream global value networks, where the nodes are individual sectors in dfferent
countries and the links are the value-added contribution relationships. Second, we introduce
a network-based measure of node similarity to compare the GVCs between any
pair of countries for each sector and each year available in the WIOD. Our networkbased
similarity is a better measure for node comparison than the existing ones because
it takes into account all the direct and indirect relationships between country-sector
pairs, is applicable to both directed and weighted networks with self-loops, and takes
into account externally defined node attributes. As a result, our measure of similarity
reveals the most intensive interactions among the GVCs across countries and over time.
From 1995 to 2011, the average similarity between sectors and countries have clear increasing
trends, which are temporarily interrupted by the recent economic crisis. This
measure of the similarity of GVCs provides quantitative answers to important questions
about dependency, sustainability, risk, and competition in the global production
system.
M1  - imt_eic_working_paper
A1  - Zhu, Zhen
A1  - Morrison, Greg
A1  - Puliga, Michelangelo
A1  - Chessa, Alessandro
A1  - Riccaboni, Massimo
PB  - IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca
SN  - 2279-6894
EP  - 30
ID  - eprints2753
ER  -