SELECT WORKING PAPERS
Trade-linked technological change has potential to increase incomes in low-income countries (LICs). The most labour-intensive segments of the textiles and apparel global value chain are in LICs. However, gaps between available technologies and best practices make it difficult to adopt more efficient production processes or move into higher value-added functions. This paper examines current technology use in the Tanzanian textiles and apparel sector, using nationally representative secondary data, primary quantitative data, and qualitative information from semistructured interviews. First, we examine whether firms’ absorptive capacity mediates the effect of imported technology on firm productivity. Second, we look at differences across geographical clusters of firms in terms of local linkage types. Third, we assess current technology, gaps in firms’ capabilities, and challenges in the sector to identify policy implications. Finally, we provide brief reflections on how firms in the Tanzanian textiles and apparel sector may adapt in the postCOVID-19 recovery phase.
Are Women Not ‘Working’? Interactions between Childcare and Women’s Economic Engagement
This paper seeks to examine how childcare impacts upon women’s economic engagement in India, Nepal, Tanzania, and Rwanda. In delineating the linkages between childcare, paid work, and other tasks that women carry out within and outside the house, this paper privileges women’s own perceptions of childcare as ‘work’, and the extent to which they see this as a tension between women’s caregiving role and their income-generating role. Our findings corroborate that women experience significant trade-offs as they engage in both market activities and childcare tasks. We highlight the important distinction between direct and supervisory childcare – with supervisory childcare taking up a large amount of women’s time across all contexts.
Protection is for Sale: but only for effective sectors
Lobbying effectiveness as an explanation for observed levels of trade protection has proved relatively elusive; and more so for developing countries. The objective of this paper is to examine how differences in lobbying effectiveness and related political
economy factors can explain variation in trade protection for Indian manufacturing sectors in the traditional model of Protection for Sale. Therefore, I attempt to answer the following question: “Is Protection still for sale with Lobbying Effectiveness?”. I find that protection is for sale but only for those sectors that
are very effective in lobbying the government via associations. This suggests that sectors with a greater number of firms that lobby by means of their membership to associations are very effective in lobbying and achieve positive trade protection. Including additional political economy factors that reflect the firm-specific strength of a sector appears to be substitute in terms of lobbying strategy.
How do we understand participation in Global Value Chains? A structured review of the literature
How do we understand participation in Global Value Chains (GVCs)? Despite its important methodological and theoretical implications, the literature has not come to a definitive answer to this question. W e aim to contribute towards understanding this as follows. First, we undertake a structured review of the literature, asking how GVC participation can be conceptualised. Second, we systematise conceptual issues and empirical approaches to quantitatively explore the impact of GVCs both at the firm and sector level. Third, we generate descriptive evidence on GVC participation over time. Fourth, taking stock on the conceptual debate on the definition of GVC participation, we focus on how micro-level data can be used to identify firms that are fully integrated in GVCs as those that import and export intermediate and capital goods, distinguishing these from those which engage in traditional arm’s length trade. Finally, we motivate an understanding of GVC participation as ‘linking into GVCs’, as a treatment to which certain firms are exposed and review possible relevant outcome variables to capture the impact of linking into GVCs. These are based on firms’ value added and productivity,
changes in their export portfolio and their position in trade networks.
Innovation, Structural Change, and Inclusion. A Cross Country PVAR Analysis
Structural change can be both, a cause or a consequence of innovation, while structural change and innovations are usually accompanied by short-term outcomes of social inclusion or exclusion. Inclusion may in turn have an impact on further innovations. Yet, we find little evidence in the literature on the three-way relations between innovation, structural change and inclusion. This paper advances a first exercise in this direction. Given the multidimensionality of each (innovation, structural change, and inclusion), we extract the underlying unobserved common factor structure from various well-known macro indicators. With a structural vector auto regression (SVAR) model for a short panel of developing countries over 13 years, we find the following main results. First, we confirm the virtuous cycle between innovation and structural change, aligning with existing literature. Second, the strongest result is the positive effect of inclusion on both innovation and structural change, that suggests policy to improve inclusion beyond poverty and inequality. Third, on decomposing the innovation index (formal, firm-level and ICT), we find each related differently to both structural change and inclusion, that suggests specific policy roles in their influence on inclusion and structural change.
Innovation, accompanied by structural change, is at the heart of economic growth and development. Yet there is limited evidence to understand interactions between innovation, structural change and inclusion in the context of low-income and emerging countries, or how these processes best support sustainable and inclusive societies. Through case studies of innovation pathways in breeding practices in the Kenyan dairy sector and anti-retroviral therapy service provision in Mozambique, we study how innovations in specific contexts lead to adoption, diffusion and upgrading, and further to structural change and inclusion or exclusion of marginalised groups. The case studies unpack the conditions for these outcomes by identifying key variables, actors and interactions that shape the innovation pathways. We find that capabilities is a key variable. In particular, we find that inclusiveness and structural changes impact successive phases of innovations through ‘reinforcing’ or ‘balancing mechanisms’, operationalised by the impact of innovation on capabilities. Other factors include the presence of interrelated innovations, power relations between actors, and the role of institutions (formal and informal). The Kenyan case suggests parallel non-competing innovation pathways, while for Mozambique, we observe competing pathways that remain to be examined further. Findings from the cases provide the basis of future primary research on inclusive structural change.
WORK IN PROGRESS
- Lobbying Effectiveness for Trade Protection in Developing Countries
- India in Global Value Chains: An analysis of Intra-Firm Transactions