Global inequality

What is inequality and how does it affect global business? A curation of resources on the topic is listed here.
Where are the world’s most unequal countries?  |  The world bank data on the Gini index  shows income inequality |  An empirical evidence of how inequality between incomes has changed over time, and how the levels of inequality in different countries is also useful to explore the topic | Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index  which combines a country’s average achievements in health, education and income with how those achievements are distributed among country’s population by “discounting” each dimension’s average value according to its level of inequality can be accessed on the UNDP page |

Global value chains

International production, trade and investments are increasingly organised within so-called global value chains (GVCs) where the different stages of the production process are located across different countries. Globalisation motivates companies to restructure their operations internationally through outsourcing and offshoring of activities according to the OECD. According to UNCTAD, the rise of the global value chains (GVCs) is reshaping the whole structure of worldwide trade flows. It is no longer true that all, or even the bulk of the value of a country’s exports can be assumed to be domestically produced. GVCs also contribute to the development of individual economies, creating jobs and value added country based activities. However, participating in global value chains does not automatically improve living standards and social conditions in a country (World Bank, 2017).A critique of mainstream and critical versions of Global Commodity Chain analysis has looked at the effect of nationalism and global value chains and the effect of low cost labour inputs on country competitiveness.
Institutional environments and governance do play an import role in GVC effectiveness.

The  value added by each country in the production of goods and services that are consumed worldwide can be accessed using Trade in Value data from the OECD as well as country specific statistical profiles from the WTO.These statistical profiles show the value-added content in an economy’s exports, its participation in global value chains and the contribution of services to the value-added content of exports. They also cover trade in intermediate goods and services, trade facilitation and foreign direct investment. The OECD has produced a 2016 EDITION OF TIVA INDICATORS (1995-2011) that can accessed online as well as downloaded as a. XLS file.

The UNCTAD-Eora GVC Database – part of UNCTAD’s FDI-TNCs-GVC Information System – provides new perspectives on trade links between economies, on the distribution of value added, income and employment resulting from trade, on the investment-trade nexus and on how transnational corporations (TNCs), through equity and contractual modes, shape patterns of value added trade.

Useful Resources
Tracing the Value-added in Global Value Chains: Product-level Case Studies in China . Read it here
Implication of Global Value Chains for Trade, Investment, Development and Jobs. Read it here
Some global value indicators can be accessed here
Making Global Value Chains Work for Development is a world bank book
The governance of global value chains– an article that builds a theoretical framework to help explain governance patterns in global value chains
An overview of the key concepts and methodological tools in GVC can be accessed here and is a very introduction to the concepts
Global value chains in a changing world- its risks and effects in Emerging Markets can be accessed here

 

Statistics of U.S. Businesses

Annual series that provides national and subnational data on the distribution of economic data by enterprise size and industry. SUSB covers most of the country’s economic activity. The series excludes data on nonemployer businesses, private households, railroads, agricultural production, and most government entities.

Understanding the Poverty Impact of the Global Financial Crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean

Any time there is an economic crisis; there is the very real potential that its consequences for human welfare will be severe. Thus when the developed world plunged into such a crisis in 2008 and growth rates in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) began to plummet, fears rose that the region will suffer rising unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, and infant mortality, among other things. This study confirms and quantifies many of the sobering links between crisis and poverty, but it also shows how powerful good policy in stable times is in attenuating those links. It thus underscores the need for sound growth policies, good macro prudential care, fiscal balance, low debt, reasonably flexible exchange rates, and the like to help prevent and manage crises. It equally shows how effective social protection responses built on adequate existing programs can be. This study documents the effects of the 2008-09 global financial crisis on poverty in 12 countries in the LAC region, and it comes away with six big picture messages, each with much nuance and many caveats that are explained briefly in this overview.
Citation
“Grosh, Margaret; Bussolo, Maurizio; Freije, Samuel. 2014. Understanding the Poverty Impact of the Global Financial Crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington, DC: World Bank. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/18727 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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