This paper examines industrialization trends in developing countries. It uses the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides time series of employment and real and nominal value added annually by 12 sectors in 51 countries for the period 1990-2018. Until the early 2000s...

We add to recent evidence on deindustrialization and document a new pattern: increasing industry polarization over time. We assess whether these new features of structural change can be explained by a dynamic open economy model with two primary driving forces, sector-biased productivity growth...

We study the role of multinationals (MNCs) in facilitating firm-level and aggregate structural transformation. Using a stylized model of multinational production and trade, we show that an inward multinational liberalization in the manufacturing sector raises employment in host country firms,...

We study the importance of international trade in structural change. Our framework has both productivity and trade cost shocks, and allows for non-unitary income and substitution elasticities. We calibrate our model to investigate South Korea's structural change between 1971 and 2005. We find...

Motivated by increasing trade and fragmentation of production across countries since World War II, we build a dynamic two-country model featuring sequential, multistage production and capital accumulation. As trade costs decline over time, globalvalue-chain (GVC) trade expands across countries,...

Recent empirical research finds that pairs of countries with stronger trade linkages tend to have more highly correlated business cycles. We assess whether the standard international business cycle framework can replicate this intuitive result. We employ a three-country model with transportation...

Climate policy pledges and negotiations involve commitments about the reduction of emissions within national borders. However, the rise of global value chains has changed the nature of production and international trade, blurring the attribution of ultimate responsibility for emissions. This...

Global value chains (GVCs) have been a vehicle for job creation in developing Asia, but there is mounting concern that more sophisticated and cost-effective technology could displace workers through automation or reshoring of production. We use the demand-based input-output approach in Reijnders...

This paper proposes an empirical framework that relates poverty reduction to production growth. We use the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database to measure the contribution to growth of productivity improvements within sectors and structural change-the reallocation of workers across...

This paper examines the impact of industrial robots on jobs. We combine data on robot adoption and occupations by industry in 37 economies for the period 2005-2015. We exploit differences across industries in technical feasibility-defined as the industry's share of tasks replaceable by robots-to...