Dr. Zoulfikar Mehoumoud Issop (p), Dr. Idriss Fontaine, Dr. Harivola Ravelonarivo

Labor-intensive manufacturing has been identified as a critical pathway to structural transformation in low-income economies, yet political instability can undermine this process in ways that go beyond simple output losses. This paper examines how the 2009 unconstitutional change of government in Madagascar affected the composition—not merely the level—of the country's integration into global value chains (GVCs). Using the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) on annual data over the 1996–2018 period, we construct a credible counterfactual by weighting a donor pool of low-income economies that shared Madagascar's pre-crisis macroeconomic and institutional characteristics. We distinguish between backward GVC participation—the share of foreign value added in gross exports, closely linked to contract-intensive manufacturing—and forward GVC participation—the share of domestic value added embedded in third-country exports, more closely associated with primary commodity exports. We find a large and persistent post-2009 decline in backward participation relative to the synthetic counterfactual, alongside a smaller but sustained positive divergence in forward participation. Supplementary SCM exercises indicate a concurrent deterioration in Rule of Law and Control of Corruption, consistent with the proposed transmission mechanism. Placebo tests suggest these patterns are unlikely to be driven by chance. The findings indicate that political instability can act as an institutional filter that disproportionately crowds out contract-intensive activities, shifting an economy's integration toward less employment-generating and more rent-dependent segments of global production networks.

Mr Emilio Becker (p), Dr. Eduardo Sanguinet

How do regional productive structures shape vulnerability when trade patterns and value chains are being reconfigured? A useful way to approach this question is to separate changes driven by sectoral composition from region-specific dynamics, and to interpret persistent specialization as a structural channel of exposure. The empirical setting considered here features strong metropolitan concentration, resource-based exporting regions, and heterogeneous service and manufacturing bases, providing a clear context to operationalize this perspective and connect it to broader debates on territorial resilience under external shocks.

Using an adjusted shift-share framework (SSA-A), regional structural change over 2013–2023 is decomposed into sector-mix (structural) effects and region-specific components. These elements are then used to construct a typology of structural trajectories for 16 regions, moving beyond binary winner/loser narratives and delivering a comparable classification of regional profiles as the paper’s core output. The typology serves as an operational entry point to discuss vulnerability channels: trajectories dominated by persistent specialization in tradable activities and limited diversification are consistent with higher exposure to sectoral and trade-related shocks, whereas more diversified structures are consistent with greater adjustment capacity and potentially lower sensitivity to single-sector disruptions.

The contribution is twofold. First, the paper provides a transparent regional classification that supports policy-relevant discussion of territorial vulnerabilities in a context of production-network reconfiguration, without requiring strong assumptions about fully observed interregional flows at the submission stage. Second, it outlines a feasible extension linking SSA-A profiles to interregional input–output tools to characterize production linkages and, in later stages, approximate productive dependence and territorial value-added capture.

Dr. Rubén Macías (p), Dr. Roberto González, Dr. Manuel Díaz

This research examines the effect of employment in the manufacturing industry of Aguascalientes on the local economy, given that manufacturing constitutes the most significant economic activity in the state. It is essential to consider global value chains as a transversal axis that promotes foreign direct investment through the establishment of transnational corporations’ production plants in various countries, with the purpose of reducing production costs and increasing organizational competitiveness in their productive activities. Accordingly, the calculation of the export-employment multiplier for the manufacturing sector is carried out using data from the 2024 Economic Censuses. The results demonstrate the impact of export activities on sectors engaged in non-export activities, along with their corresponding multipliers, which indicate the number of jobs generated in the local economy for each additional worker hired in the manufacturing sector in Aguascalientes. The study concludes by underscoring the importance of government participation in the development of public policies that foster foreign direct investment and stimulate the export sector.