Using product-level data on exports from different cities within China, this paper investigates the contributing factors to the rising export sophistication. [WP no. 226].

China's exports have become increasingly sophisticated. This has generated anxiety in developed countries as the competitive pressure may be increasingly felt outside labor-intensive industries. Using product-level data on exports from different cities within China, this paper investigates the...

The rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in world trade has brought both benefits and anxiety to other economies. For many policy questions, it is crucial to know the extent of foreign value added (FVA) in exports. We review a general formula in Koopman, Wang and Wei (2008) for...

Chinese exports have become increasingly sophisticated. This has generated anxiety in developed countries as competitive pressure may increasingly be felt outside labor-intensive industries. Using product-level data on exports from different cities within China, this paper investigates the...

Chinas exports have become increasingly sophisticated. This has generated anxiety in developed countries as the competitive pressure may be increasingly felt outside labor-intensive industries. Using product-level data on exports from different cities within China, this paper investigates the...

This paper presents a new conceptual framework to measure sources of value-added trade by country in global production networks. With a parsimonious decomposition of gross exports that eliminates "double counting", it integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added...

While openness to trade is a well-recognized hallmark of many successful emerging market economies known as "growth miracles," another component of the growth model is a leapfrogging strategy - the use of policies to guide the industrial structural transformation ahead of a country's factor...

While openness to trade is a well-recognized hallmark of the Asian growth model, another component of the model is a leapfrogging strategy—the use of policies to guide industrial structural transformation ahead of a country's factor endowment. Does the leapfrogging strategy work? Opinions vary...

This paper provides both a conceptual framework for decomposing a country's gross exports into value-added components by source and a new bilateral database on value-added trade. Our parsimonious framework integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the...