Income and Jobs from Global Value Chain Participation by Developing Asian Economies

This paper studies participation by developing Asian economies in global value chains (GVCs). We use an input–output framework to measure the impacts that GVCs of final manufactured products have on jobs and income. We combine new occupations data with multiregional input–output tables to examine 15 developing Asian economies from 2000 to 2018. Using an accounting framework, developing Asian economies are compared to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies. Our findings show that various developing Asian economies—including Bangladesh, Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Viet Nam—achieved rapid expansions in the scale of their respective production activities. Further, several economies—including the PRC, Thailand, and Viet Nam—increased productivity in knowledge-intensive activities, suggesting functional upgrading within GVCs.