Global Value Chain

Local innovation and global value chains in developing countries

Local innovation and global value chains in developing countries

UNU-MERIT Working Papers #2015-022

with Valentina De Marchi and Elisa Giuliani

This working paper is part of a collaborative research effort of UNIDO and UNU‐MERIT. It has been commissioned as a background paper for the UNIDO Industrial Development Report 2016. In this study we undertake a systematic review of the literature on GVCs in developing countries to investigate if and how innovation has been undertaken at the local level.

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Interactive Learning in Global Value Chains and National Innovation Systems

Interactive Learning in Global Value Chains and National Innovation Systems

Interactive Learning in Global Value Chains and National Innovation Systems – Aalborg University – Copenhagen

On May 22nd I participated in the workshop ‘Interactive learning in Global value chains and National innovation systems – Capacity building to escape the poverty and the middle income traps’. Participants from all regional chapters of Globelics attended the meeting.

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Innovation Drivers, Value Chains and the Geography of Multinational Corporations in Europe

Innovation Drivers, Value Chains and the Geography of Multinational Corporations in Europe

Journal of Economic Geography, forthcoming

The article is co-authored with Riccardo Crescenzi and Carlo Pietrobelli.

It investigates the geography of multinational companies’ investments in the EU regions. The ‘traditional’ sources of location advantages (i.e. agglomeration economies, market access and labour market conditions) are considered together with innovation and socio-institutional drivers of investments, captured by means of regional “social filter” conditions. This makes it possible to empirically assess the different role played by such advantages in the location decision of investments at different stages of the value chain and disentangle the differential role of national vs. regional factors. The empirical analysis covers the EU-25 regions and suggests that regional socio- economic conditions are crucially important for the location decisions of investments in the most sophisticated knowledge-intensive stages of the value chain.

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The resilience of clusters in the context of globalisation: The basque wind value chain

European Planning Studies, 21(7): 989-1006

The article is co-authored with A. Elola and M.D. Parrilli.

In this paper we study how globalization impacts on the structure and governance patterns of value chains and on the resilience of local clusters. We study the value chains related to two Basque (Spain) companies in the wind energy industry, Iberdrola and Gamesa, and the local cluster to which they belong. We find that firms within the cluster have different types of relationships with lead companies depending on their competences and the complexity of their products. As a consequence, firms also present different potential for growth and/or resilience: some have the capacity to internationalize their operations and/or shift to the offshore wind market, others are vulnerable to competition from providers in the emerging countries. Against this context, we discuss how the cluster responds to these challenges and the role of policy.

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Análisis de la cadena de valor de la industria eólica vasca: oportunidades y ámbitos de mejora

Orkestra, Universidad de Deusto, San Sebastian.

With M.D. Parrilli, E. Álvarez Pelegry, A. Elola, U. Lorenz

This paper addresses two pressing issues: first, it highlights the need to explore an industry with a broad global outlook in a world that increasingly requires alternative energies to foster local and global development in a sustained and, above all, sustainable manner; second, it seeks to identify the overall competitive positioning of agents and firms of the Basque power industry in the global value chains of the wind energy sector that seem to form a critical mass that could be heavily exploited with a view to economic and social development for the region and the country.

Download the pdf, WP Orkestra 2012