Tracing value-added and double counting in sales of foreign affiliates and domestic-owned companies

In this paper, we propose a new accounting framework for the decomposition of value-added into domestic, foreign and double counting terms in domestic sales. In this framework, we show where the value-added double counting is derived from and give an explicit expression of domestic and foreign double counting terms based on the Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) tables’ Ghosh insight. We can distinguish domestic sales from exports and trace the value added and double counting in sales of foreign affiliates and domestic-owned enterprises. Based on this framework, we then calculate the value-added by foreign-owned and domestic-owned firms in exports and in domestic sales by using an Inter-Country Input-Output table split according to ownership. Preliminary results suggest that there is much more double counting in sales of foreign affiliates than in exports and that more value-added is created through exports than through sales of foreign affiliates in world GDP.