This introduction grounds the middle-income (MI) trap by looking at the empirical realities of firms, sectors, national, and subnational institutions embedded in global value chains (GVCs). While MI-trap scholarship has shed light on macro-structural constraints, it often overlooks international...

Whether China can avoid the middle-income trap has been the subject of extensive research. Currently classified as an upper middle-income country, China increasingly exhibits similar characteristics as countries currently experiencing the middle-income trap. However, using evidence from China's...

In proposing industrial policies to promote development-enhancing upgrading, both the Middle-Income Trap (MIT) and Global Value Chain (GVC) literatures imply a "technocratic" approach that matches a given technical challenge to the right policy instrument. This paper suggests that, apart from...

Bridging together the Middle-Income Trap (MIT) literature with the Global Value Chains (GVCs) approach may provide a more fine-grained understanding of the middle-income (MI) countries' developmental dilemmas. While the former identifies the structural challenges these countries face, the latter...

In an era of fragmented global production and domestic decentralization, middle-income countries confront the complex challenge of industrial upgrading. While national governments remain central to industrial policy design and funding, upgrading unfolds through multi-level interactions between...

Local content policies (LCPs) are key instruments of industrial policy used by middle-income countries (MICs) to capture segments of global value chains (GVCs). While, in principle, LCPs are very similar, in practice, they are highly diverse. What to prioritize, how to measure it, while...

Since the 1980s, state capacity has been a major explanation for countries leaving the middle-income trap. However, this literature is unable to explain the failed experiences of countries with relatively high state capacity. This was the case of Chile after the unsuccessful enaction of a series...

On 1 March 2018, President Trump declared a 25% tariff on certain steel imports by invoking Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act. The tariff pitted two of America's most storied and interconnected industries, steel and auto producers, against one another and made allies out of longtime...

Although citizens value competitive markets and support small businesses, we observe substantial variation in market concentration. Why do politicians abstain from taking action to reduce concentration? We propose an often overlooked political benefit to concentrated markets: When concentration...