Global Value Chain (GVC) participation is typically associated with a productivity premium, yet similar firms can benefit differently depending on the possibility for creating production linkages offered by their countries’ involvement in trade. The authors show that country-sector intermediate trade network centrality is also positively associated with firms’ productivity, suggesting that the connectivity of the business environment may enhance productivity on top of direct firm-level involvement in GVCs. For a large cross-section of MENA countries included in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES), they find evidence of productivity premia using several firm-level GVC participation measures and network centrality indicators constructed from the EORA input-output tables.
The paper is based on the EMANES Working Paper “Global Value Chains and the productivity of firms in MENA countries: Does connectivity matter?”
Link to the paper at the Structural Change and Economic Dynamics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0954349X23001698
Structural Change and Economic Dynamics publishes articles about theoretical and applied, historical and methodological aspects of structural change in economic systems. The journal publishes work analyzing dynamics and structural change in economic, technological, institutional and behavioral patterns.