Crisis and protection in the automotive industry : a global value chain perspective

In this paper the authors apply global value chain (GVC) analysis to recent trends in the global automotive industry, with special attention paid to government interventions triggered by the recent economic crisis. The authors first highlight some of the defining characteristics of GVCs in this important industry, especially the unusually strong regional structure of production and sales. National political institutions create pressure for local content, which drives production close to end markets, where it tends to be organized nationally or regionally. They then examine policy reactions to the recent economic crisis, and provide some discussion of the government interventions in the industry. The authors end with a number of policy conclusions that highlight the likely impact of the interventions on the evolution GVCs and the growth of the industry in developing countries.Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Water and Industry,Debt Markets

Effects of the crisis on the automotive industry in developing countries : a global value chain perspective

This paper applies global value chain analysis to study recent trends in the global automotive industry. The authors pay special attention to the effects of the recent economic crisis on the industry in developing countries. The principal finding is that the crisis has accelerated pre-crisis trends toward greater importance of the industry in the South. More rapid growth of car ownership is the impetus, but the co-location and close interaction of suppliers and lead firms in this industry is an important catalyst. Opportunities to move up in the value chain for suppliers in emerging economies have proliferated and are likely to become even stronger now that an increasing number of new models are developed specifically for markets in developing countries. The co-location of assembly and parts plants in national and regional production systems has largely confined the impact of sales declines during the crisis to each country/region. In addition, the different development strategies followed by countries like Mexico, China, and India are slowly converging as their industries gain size and independence.Markets and Market Access,Microfinance,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Debt Markets

Measuring Manufacturing: How the Computer and Semiconductor Industries Affect the Numbers and Perceptions

Growth in U.S. manufacturing’s real value-added has exceeded that of aggregate GDP, except during recessions, leading many to conclude that the sector is healthy and that the 30 percent decline in manufacturing employment since 2000 is largely the consequence of automation. The robust growth in real manufacturing GDP, however, is driven by one industry segment: computers and electronic products. In most of manufacturing, real GDP growth has been weak or negative and productivity growth modest. The extraordinary real GDP growth in computer-related industries reflects prices for computers and semiconductors that, when adjusted for product quality improvements, are falling rapidly. Productivity growth in these industries, in turn, largely reflects product and process improvements from research and development, not automation. Although computer-related industries have driven growth in the manufacturing sector, production has shifted to Asia, and the U.S. trade deficit in these products has soared since the 1990s. The outsized effect computer-related industries have on manufacturing statistics also may distort economic relationships in the data and result in perverse research findings. Statistical agencies should take steps to assure that the influence that computer-related industries have on manufacturing-sector statistics is transparent to data users

How Do We Define Value Chains and Production Networks?

Summaries This article is intended to contribute to the process of building a set of tools that will help advance the debate on the shape and trajectory of global economic integration. The article uses a ‘Value?chain’ approach to construct a set of conceptual terms and concepts intended to better specify the concrete actors in the global economy as well as the linkages that bind them into a larger whole. I propose a set of terms and concepts that specify three critical value chain dimensions: organizational scale, geographic scale and types of value chain productive actors. The article also lays out a distinction between value chains and production networks

From Commodity Chains to Value Chains: Interdisciplinary Theory Building in an Age of Globalization

This chapter situates, elaborates, and further explains the theory of global value chain (GVC) governance developed by Gereffi, Humphrey and Sturgeon (2005). The theory of GVC governance at the center of the paper is part of a long-term effort to generalize from accumulated comparative observational research on a range of global industries. First, I discuss the motivations for supplementing the “buyer-driven” and “producer-driven” modes of global commodity chain governance developed by Gary Gereffi in the 1990s with an industry-neutral, non-empirical framework. Second, I briefly present the features of the GVC governance framework as they appear in the 2005 article. Third, I discuss its interdisciplinary theoretical underpinnings of the framework in more detail than was possible in the original article. Fourth, I discuss the problem of variation in GVC governance. Fifth, I situate the GVC governance framework in a larger field of GVC-related theory, including but not limited to power and institutions

Modular Production's Impact on Japan's Electronics Industry

This paper examines the notion that national industrial models evolve with time, and provides evidence of transformation when elements are transferred from one society to another. The Japanese Production System, itself an adaptation of American-style mass production to the constraints of the post World War Two Japanese economy, in turn had a profound impact on the organization of industrial production in the United States, especially during the 1990s. I characterize the new model that emerged in the United States as the “Modular Production System.” This paper examines the response of Japanese electronics firms to Modular Production in the period 2000-2004. It is based on forty-three interviews with top managers at Japan’s largest electronics firms, conducted during the calendar years 1999-2004, as well as insights gained from more than 600 field interviews conducted between 1999 and 2005 for the MIT Industrial Performance Center’s Globalization Study. I argue that Japanese electronics firms have been strongly influenced by Modular Production but that they have, unsurprisingly, adapted it to their current environment and in the process may have begun to transform both the Japanese and Modular Production Systems. While it is too early to determine if these changes amount to the emergence of a distinct industrial model, the chapter concludes by laying out the challenges and opportunities that now face Japanese electronics firms given their recent experiments with joint technology development, production alliances, and global outsourcing

Introduction: Globalisation, Value Chains and Development

Globalisation has become a catchword for the international economy at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The increasing importance of export-oriented industrialisation has made integration into the global economy virtually synonymous with development for a number of nations. However, there is an acute awareness that the gains from globalisation are very unevenly distributed within as well as between societies. A growing body of work analyses globalisation processes from the perspective of ‘value chains’; that is that international trade in goods and services should not be seen solely, or even mainly, as a multitude of arm’s-length market-based transactions but rather as systems of governance - involving multinational enterprises - that link firms together in a variety of sourcing and contracting arrangements. Understanding how these value chains operate is very important for developing country firms and policymakers because the way chains are structured has implications for newcomers trying to participate in the chain and to gain access to necessary skills, competences and supporting services. Most of the papers in this Bulletin build on the results of a workshop in Bellagio, Italy in September 2000, where all these issues were discussed

Reactivation of Latent Tuberculosis in Cynomolgus Macaques Infected with SIV Is Associated with Early Peripheral T Cell Depletion and Not Virus Load

HIV-infected individuals with latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection are at significantly greater risk of reactivation tuberculosis (TB) than HIV-negative individuals with latent TB, even while CD4 T cell numbers are well preserved. Factors underlying high rates of reactivation are poorly understood and investigative tools are limited. We used cynomolgus macaques with latent TB co-infected with SIVmac251 to develop the first animal model of reactivated TB in HIV-infected humans to better explore these factors. All latent animals developed reactivated TB following SIV infection, with a variable time to reactivation (up to 11 months post-SIV). Reactivation was independent of virus load but correlated with depletion of peripheral T cells during acute SIV infection. Animals experiencing reactivation early after SIV infection (<17 weeks) had fewer CD4 T cells in the periphery and airways than animals reactivating in later phases of SIV infection. Co-infected animals had fewer T cells in involved lungs than SIV-negative animals with active TB despite similar T cell numbers in draining lymph nodes. Granulomas from these animals demonstrated histopathologic characteristics consistent with a chronically active disease process. These results suggest initial T cell depletion may strongly influence outcomes of HIV-Mtb co-infection

What the disjunctivist is right about

There is a traditional conception of sensory experience on which the experiences one has looking at, say, a cat could be had by someone merely hallucinating a cat. Disjunctivists take issue with this conception on the grounds that it does not enable us to understand how perceptual knowledge is possible. In particular, they think, it does not explain how it can be that experiences gained in perception enable us to be in ‘cognitive contact’ with objects and facts. I develop this chal- lenge to the traditional conception and then show that it is possible to accommo- date an adequate account of cognitive contact in keeping with the traditional conception. One upshot of the discussion is that experiences do not bear the explanatory burden placed upon them by disjunctivists