Expert meeting on Global Value Chains

Gaaitzen de Vries participated in an expert meeting on the Dutch economy in Global Value Chains organized by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the recent report by De Vries and Timmer on the mutual dependence of manufacturing and services for Dutch competitiveness.

PWT 9.0: planned features and approximate release

The next version of the Penn World Table, version 9.0, is currently under development with numerous changes. There is no firm release date at this point, other than 'as soon as possible'. Our best estimate at this point will be a release in the first quarter of 2016. Read on for the features of PWT9.0

Premature deindustrialization: GGDC data in the Wall Street Journal

While advanced economies grew rich from specialising in manufacturing and employing a large share of the labor force in this sector, the research of Dani Rodrik suggests that path is no longer available to lower-income economies today. How does he know that? Thanks to the GGDC 10-sector database, on which the Wall Street Journal also draws for their article.

Trade in value added research covered on RTL-Z

Gauging the strength of the Netherlands of a trading nation and analysing where it specialises should use data on trade in value added, rather than the traditional gross trade statistics. Well-known to experts, but Marcel Timmer's research in the spotlights on RTL-Z (in Dutch) carries the message to a broader audience.

Productivity and convergence paper accepted in JoE

A paper by Robert Inklaar and Erwin Diewert on "Measuring industry productivity and cross-country convergence" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Econometrics, in a special issue on economic measurement. The paper finds that cross-country productivity convergence has mainly occurred due to fast productivity growth in the traded sector of major emerging economies, like China and India.

Manufacturing and services need each other

Gaaitzen de Vries and Marcel Timmer finished a report for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and VNO/NCW titled: “Dutch Manufacturing Competing in Global Value Chains”. The report stresses the mutual dependence of manufacturing and services for the competitiveness of the Dutch economy.

Peer-review of new FAO Agricultural Database

Reitze Gouma gave a presentation on the occasion of the launch of the FAO's new agricultural productivity database, indicating how incorporating measurement lessons from EU KLEMS would be beneficial.

Paper accepted on African inequality trends

The paper ‘Long term trends in economic inequality: Lessons from colonial Botswana 1921–1974’ written by Jutta Bolt and Ellen Hillbom (Lund University) has been accepted for publication in the Economic History Review. The show a rise and subsequent decline in income inequality over a long time horizon for this African country and argue that these trends are not related to industrialisation, but perhaps to urbanisation and the rise of the services economy.

Value chain specialisation in Sweden

Gaaitzen de Vries completed a consultancy report on ‘Global Value Chain Specialization Patterns of Sweden and Its Key Competitors’ for Tillväxtanalys (Stockholm, Sweden). The analysis shows that Austria and the Netherlands are emerging as key competitors in terms of being active in the same markets and activities.

Alternative poverty measurement

Robert Inklaar presented research-in-progress with Jutta Bolt at a World Bank meeting. The main question is whether the World Bank's approach to measuring global poverty does adequate justice to cross-country differences and whether a new method for determining the cost of subsistence using data from ICP is more appropriate.

El Pais on value chains

El Pais reports on the changing structure of world trade using data from the World Input-Output Database (in Spanish).

Emissions growth has domestic roots

Gaaitzen de Vries published new research with Benno Ferrarini of the Asian Development Bank where they account for the growth of carbon dioxide emissions due to changes in consumption, technology and global supply chain trade, see here. While emerging economies have increased their emissions in part to satisfy consumption demand in advanced economies, most emission increases are due to increased domestic consumption.

PWT paper appears in AER

A paper co-authored by Robert Feenstra from UC Davis, Robert Inklaar and Marcel Timmer has appeared in the October issue of the American Economic Review. The paper details the new version of the widely-used Penn World Table, how this database can best be used and reports on novel applications.

China-EU seminar on structural change

Gaaitzen de Vries participated in an expert seminar organised by the European Commission's DG EMPL and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) on structural change.

Value added in exports paper accepted in AER

The paper "Tracing Value-Added and Double Counting in Gross Exports: Comment" (login required), written by Bart Los, Marcel Timmer and Gaaitzen de Vries will appear in the American Economic Review. They provide a much simpler and more intuitive method for determining the amount of domestic value added in exports than the original paper by Koopman, Wang and Wei.

New GGDC hires

Four new hires will strengthen the GGDC: PhD students Stefan Pahl and Aobo Jiang, and post docs Laurie Reijnders and Wen Chen.

Start of the post-WIOD VICI project of Marcel Timmer

The VICI project "Modelling Global Value Chains, a new framework to study trade, jobs and income inequality in an interdependent world" has started. This 5-year project involving a team of PhD students and post docs is led by Marcel Timmer and funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Maddison database: update in progress

Jutta Bolt presented a joint paper with Herman de Jong, Robert Inklaar and Jan Luiten van Zanden in the session ‘The Maddison project: measuring economic performance across time and space’ at the XVIIth World Economic History Congress, Kyoto. The paper reports work-in-progress on updating the Maddison database on long-run income levels to reflect the latest cross-country relative income levels out of the International Comparison Program (ICP). This update will lead to important shifts in historical comparative income estimates. The revised database is expected to be released in the first half of 2016.

WIOD course at IIOA conference

Erik Dietzenbacher and Bart Los taught a one-day course on the World Input-Output Database in the International School for Input-Output Analysis at the International Input-Output Conference in Mexico City.