Participation in global value chains and varieties of development patterns

This paper relates participation in global value chains (GVCs) to development patterns at the country level. It accounts for the diversity and interdependence of development through a cross-country analysis for 51 countries between 1995 and 2008. We identify three patterns of socio-economic development related to various degrees and modes of GVC participation: a social upgrading mirage, the reproduction of the core and unequal growth. This result is achieved thanks to the introduction of two new elements to the literature: first, the introduction of new macroeconomic indicators of GVC participation and economic gains that are explicitly based in a theoretically consistent definition of GVCs; second, the identification of a variety of interdependent development patterns related to GVC participation through the use of principal component analysis and cluster analysis.