The main purpose of this study is to propose three analytical methodologies for analyzing global value chains, where the different phases of the production process are located across countries, at the national and industry level. For this purpose, we adopt an international input-output model and the World Input-Output Tables (WIOTs) from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD). This dissertation consists of three main chapters.
In the first chapter, we develop a framework to break up a country or an industry''s gross outputs into various value-added items. This research generalizes the gross exports accounting framework to one that decomposes the gross outputs at both the sector and country levels. In other words, our analysis framework includes not only gross exports, but also domestic consumption and it provides a generalized view of international fragmentation of production. After completely breaking down the exports of global intermediate goods, we find that the literature overestimates domestic value-added, while it underestimates pure double counted terms embodied in the gross exports of countries and industries at the same time. We present new measures of vertical specialization in international trade based on our generalized accounting framework.
In the second chapter, we analyze the global value-added network of each industry. To do this, we propose a generalized global unit structure model and the derivation method of a global value-added unit structure that can eliminate the double-counting problem. The global value-added unit structure stands for the basic technology mix in the global level of each industry and the global value-added impacts of direct and indirect intermediate products to produce one unit of final demand in a certain sector. This study applies Social Network Analysis (SNA) for an empirical analysis because the global value-added unit structure represents a weighted directed network with self-loops. Also, we use a set of measures of network indices from SNA to identify the global value-added unit structure of each industry.
In the third chapter, this paper presents a type of value-added exports based on backward linkages, in contrast to existing studies that have suggested two types of value-added exports based on forward linkages. These value-added exports are concepts of trade statistics for eliminating double counted terms in gross exports. Thus, we consider not only the three types of value-added exports but also gross exports to define the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) in some particular sectors. We investigate the distributions of the four types of RCA indices in 40 countries. Also, we analyze the distributions of industries where switching occurred between comparative advantage and comparative disadvantage according to their RCA types. Finally, we suggest a new framework to define key sectors by using both RCA types based on forward and backward linkages.