Greece's Integration into Global Value Chains

This paper investigates Greece’s involvement in GVCs using the decomposition suggested by Wang et al. (2013, 2018) and applied to the World Input-Output Database (WIOD). In general, we find that domestic value added is high in service sectors and much lower in manufacturing, in line with the results from the literature. However, we find evidence of both upstream and downstream activity in different sectors. In particular, upstreamness is found in crop and animal production, mining and quarrying, the manufacture of basic metals, and wholesale and retail trade. Downstreamness is common in accommodation and food services. Two sectors ―manufacture of food products and manufacture of pharmaceuticals― have seen a rise in the importance of domestic value added in exports. That is, the products are increasingly being made from start to finish, providing high levels of domestic value added in exports. Finally, there are sectors which display the characteristics of both upstreamness and downstreamness. These include the manufacture of textiles, wood and wood products, paper and paper products and, most importantly, petroleum and chemicals, which exhibit the greatest degree of GVC integration of any sector in Greece. The consolidation of these trends towards greater integration ―either in manufacturing or in services and distribution― is likely to be of benefit for the Greek economy, allowing it to improve the quality of its exports as well as lowering their price