Silvia Cerisola (p), Roberta Capello

Roberto Dellisanti

After a period of decisive internationalization of the production processes in Global Value Chains (GVCs), doubts over their efficiency have clearly emerged. The 2008 and the COVID-19 crises have in fact demonstrated all the fragility of a geographically segmented industrial system. In addition, the weak productivity dynamics registered in the European economy and the apparent loss of industrial know-how led the European Union to advocate for reindustrialization (see EU “Open Strategic Autonomy” and “Manufacturing Imperative”), potentially encouraging back-shoring. Apart from a few case study-type empirical works, however, very little is known about the role of GVCs at the regional level, and particularly about their function in stimulating reindustrialization processes at the territorial level. The present work addresses this gap exploiting the regionalization of input-output trade in value added data and exploring how structural changes in GVCs affected reindustrialization processes in the European regions. In more details, we expect a reduction of the external dependence to be related with regional reindustrialization, notably in sectors in which the area is/used to be specialized.

Jacopo Canello (p), Nicoletta Giudice

Silvia Cerisola

The aim of this work is to investigate the impact of global sourcing activities by Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) on the strategies and performances of domestic subcontractors operating in the same home region. The empirical analysis is implemented using a sample of producers operating in the Italian clothing and footwear industry during the 2008-2015 period, and exploits novel data extracted from the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance Annual Survey (IMEFAS). In this contribution, our main question is whether production relocation should be regarded as a positive or negative shock for local subcontractors. By addressing this important issue, we aim to shed light on the domestic effects of backward GVC participation on regional development.

This paper contributes to three main strands of the literature, First, it adds new insights to the debate on the regional consequences of increased exposure to production relocation, evaluating the impact of offshore outsourcing on domestic subcontracting activities. Second, we contribute to the ongoing debate on economic upgrading in GVCs, adopting a relational perspective that is centered around the role of production relocation and is focused on small domestic subcontractors. Third, we add new insights to understand the implications of intermediated or indirect internationalization. The most relevant contributions in this field of research focus on the role of trade intermediaries, whereas less is known about firms participating in GVCs indirectly by providing inputs to other value chain participants. The current gap is mainly motivated by the limited availability of suitable micro-data, even though the number of datasets that allow tracking buyer-supplier relationships is recently increasing. Despite these improvements, the regional implications of global sourcing decisions are still far from being completely understood.

Roberta Capello, Roberto Dellisanti (p), Giovanni Perucca

Jacopo Canello

During the past decades, an unprecedented wave of globalization caused the emergence of Global Value Chains (GVCs) and GVCs-related research. This stream of research mostly focused on the national dimension, provided relevant insights of the participation of national economies to the globally fragmented production processes. Despite this evidence, very little is known about the participation of regional economies to GVCs.
The poor evidence on the regional participation to GVCs is due to two elements, one conceptual and one empirical. On the one hand, the phenomenon has been conceptualized as driven by the comparative advantage of countries, in which the regional dimension had no role to play. On the other hand, data limitation has always represented a threat to regional studies that started to emerge only recently, when regional-level data on GVCs became available (Thissen et al., 2018).
The regional dimension, on the contrary, is an important aspect to analyse. The participation to a GVC by a country is not spatially homogeneous. It provides growth opportunities to regions at detriment to others, according to the way regions participate in the GVCs. For this reason, the paper is interested in going to the territorial roots of GVCs, identifying and mapping the different modes with which regions participate to GVCs and to highlight which local characteristics are associated to a more rewarding position in GVCs.
Based on regional matrices of trade in value added (Thissen et al., 2018), two indicators are built for 258 European regions. The first one measures the regional intensity of participation in GVCs, the second captures what regions gain in terms of local value added by such participation. Put together, four modes of participation to a GVCs emerge. Through a multinomial model, the major regional characteristics of competitiveness, economic specialization and urban/rural structure will be associated to each of the four modes. This evidence will shed light on the determinants of the positioning of European regions in GVC, capturing the value they are able to produce in global processes.