Positioning in Global Value Chains: World Map and Indicators, a New Dataset Available for GVC Analyses

Abstract This work reviews and computes the commonly used Global Value Chains (GVC) positioning indicators found in the empirical literature, providing scholars with a novel and comprehensive global dataset of upstreamness and downstreamness measures. This dataset covers a wide range of countries, including many developing nations, and industries, and spans an extensive timeframe. Specifically, it offers GVC positioning indicators for all economies and industries included in prominent Inter-Country Input-Output tables, such as ADB, EORA, OECD TiVA, WIOD, and Long-run WIOD. This work also delves into the degree of comparability across the different datasets, offering informative comparisons of the GVC positioning measures encompassing overlapping countries and periods, sectors, geographical regions, and income levels. Notably, these indicators are “ready-to-use” and open access, presenting an exceptional opportunity for qualitative and quantitative analyses of various economic dimensions on GVCs and for informing policymaking.