B i o - b a s e d a n d A p p l i e d E c o n o m i c s BAE Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6e172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Copyright: © 2022 S. Nenci, I. Fusacchia, A. Giunta, P. Montalbano, C. Pietrobelli. Open access, article published by Firenze University Press under CC-BY-4.0 License. Firenze University Press | www.fupress.com/bae Citation: S. Nenci, I. Fusacchia, A. Giunta, P. Montalbano, C. Pietrobelli (2022). Mapping global value chain par- ticipation and positioning in agriculture and food: stylised facts, empirical evi- dence and critical issues. Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121. doi: 10.36253/bae-12558 Received: January 8, 2022 Accepted: March 2, 2022 Published: August 30, 2022 Data Availability Statement: All rel- evant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Competing Interests: The Author(s) declare(s) no conflict of interest. Editor: Simone Cerroni, Valentina Rai- mondi. ORCID SN: 0000-0003-3283-2269 IF: 0000-0002-1965-9257 AG: 0000-0002-1562-7792 PM: 0000-0003-1397-8537 CP: 0000-0002-3989-8642 Keynote speech of the 10th AIEAA Conference Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food: stylised facts, empirical evidence and critical issues Silvia Nenci1, Ilaria Fusacchia1,2, Anna Giunta1,2, Pierluigi Montalbano3, Carlo Pietrobelli1,4 1 Roma Tre University 2 Rossi-Doria Centre 3 Sapienza University 4 United Nations University UNU-Merit * Corresponding author. E-mail: silvia.nenci@uniroma3.it Abstract. This paper aims to overview the recent body of empirical work on the importance of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in international production and trade. We begin by reviewing different approaches and levels of GVC analysis. We then consider developments in methods and data. Focusing on the agriculture and food sector, we present a map of GVC measures - at the country and sectoral level - computed using trade in value added data to allow researchers to better assess the countries’ engage- ment in GVCs. We also apply this data to show some stylized facts on GVC partici- pation and positioning in agriculture and food and provide empirical evidence of the economic impact of the GVCs on these sectors. We conclude with some critical issues and speculative thoughts regarding the future of GVCs. Keywords: global value chains, participation and positioning, trade in value added, agricultural and food sectors, survey. JEL codes: F14, O50, Q17. 1. THE IMPORTANCE OF GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS: PAST AND PRESENT Over the past twenty years, the term “global value chains” (GVCs) has become increasingly popular among economists, particularly those in the area of international trade. GVCs can be defined as the full range of activi- ties – dispersed across different countries – that firms and workers engage in to bring a product from its conception to its end use (see Gereffi and Fer- nandez-Stark, 2011). Starting from the early 1990s, the world-wide economy experienced a radical transformation through a significant fragmentation in the production of goods and services and a deeper international division of labour, resulting in larger returns from specialization. This new era has been driven by at least two main factors. First, the information and commu- nication technology (ICT) revolution facilitated the global outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing activities. Second, the sharp drop in effective http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode 94 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. trade costs, which has been driven both by a significant increase in the rate of reduction of man-made trade bar- riers and faster methods of shipping goods (Antràs and Chor, 2021). The dramatic fragmentation in the organization of world production raised by the GVCs has also been wit- nessed by a sharp increase in the trade of intermediate goods, accounting for more than 50 percent of world trade in the last years and increased tenfold in value over the last thirty years (Figure 1), thus justifying the growing interest of trade economists in understanding global production arrangements. The evolution of GVC is having a deep impact in many sectors such as resource-based commodities, apparel, electronics, tourism and business service out- sourcing, with significant implications in terms of global trade, production and employment, for both developed and developing countries. For industrialized econo- mies, GVCs ensure access to lower priced inputs, wider variety and economies of scale. For developing econo- mies, GVCs represent a valid shortcut to industrializa- tion since they allow them to join existing supply chains instead of building them. Moreover, entering in a proven supply chain eliminates the need to acquire a compara- tive advantage in a broad range of production stages domestically. The specialized literature analyses the impact of GVCs by distinguishing between economic upgrading, usually defined in terms of efficiency of the production process or characteristics of the product or activities performed (Humphrey and Schmitz, 2002), and social upgrading often referred to outcomes related to employ- ment and pay, gender and the environment (Milberg and Winkler, 2010). As for the former, the literature has pointed out a positive relationship between GVC partici- pation and productivity both in developed and develop- ing countries (Kummritz, 2016; Montalbano and Nenci, 2018; Constantinescu et al., 2019). Offshoring and GVCs can lead to significant gains in productivity through numerous channels: the availability of broader input varieties (Halpern et al., 2015); finer division of labour across countries, even by inducing firms to specialize in core tasks (Grossman et al., 2008; Criscuolo et al., 2017; Antràs, 2020); greater competition; learning-by-doing externalities and technology spillovers (Baldwin et al., 2014; Piermartini et al., 2014; Benz et al., 2014). Even though some of these channels are related to traditional trade as well, welfare benefits can be larger when consid- ering a multiple-sector framework and the input-output linkages (Caliendo et al., 2015). This evidence shows that GVCs are a key factor in increasing wages and boosting development and long-term growth. However, the rela- tionship between GVC participation and inclusive devel- opment does not fall automatically from the premises. As for social upgrading, the specialized literature also high- lights the positive effects of GVCs on employment. This 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 M ill io ns $ Exports Imports Figure 1. Trend in international trade in intermediate goods (millions of USD). Notes: values of intermediate goods for all the industries included in the BEC - Broad Economic Categories Rev.5 classification. Source: Authors’ elaboration on UN-Comtrade data using BEC Classification. 95 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food may vary depending on the industry characteristics and the relative engagement in the value chain of the activi- ties that are not outsourced. Relevant employment effects have been observed also in the agro-food sector in South- east Asia, with countries having the highest shares of workforce associated with agro-food GVCs (Lopez-Gon- zalez, 2016). A strand of the literature has also explored the beneficial effects of trade in intermediate inputs on a country’s innovation performance, through the transmis- sion of technology and research and development spillo- vers (Tajoli and Felice, 2018; Fracasso and Marzetti, 2015; Piermartini and Rubinova, 2014). Turning to sectoral value chains, studies on agri- food chain are not new (Davis and Goldberg, 1957), and the literature embraces some complementary tradi- tions: commodity chain analysis focuses on worldwide temporal and spatial relations (Hopkins and Waller- stein, 1986); filière analysis focuses on national politi- cal regulation and institutions (Lauret, 1983), whereas value chain analysis focuses on international business organisation and profitability (Porter, 1990). There have also been several applications of industrial organisation to economic and policy issues in the food and agricul- tural sector as well as analysis of the interaction between industrial organisation and policy in a trade setting: see (among many) Karp and Jeffrey (1993), Scoppola (2007), McCorriston and Sheldon (2011), and Sexton (2012). Much empirical evidence on agri-food GVCs is largely focused on capturing the impact on national economies through an analysis of case studies on the globally inte- grated value chain at the product level. The increasing importance of global agricultural trade registered dur- ing the past three decades comes with changes in the way GVCs are organised, with increasing levels of verti- cal coordination, upgrading of the supply base and the increased importance of large multinational food com- panies (Swinnen and Maertens, 2007; McCullough et al., 2008; Scoppola, 2021). A relatively small number of com- panies now organise the global supply of food and link small producers in developed or developing countries to consumers all over the world (Gereffi and Lee, 2009). This is generally referred to as agro-food GVCs (Hum- phrey and Memedovic, 2006; Liapis and Tsigas, 2014; Greenville et al., 2016; Balié et al., 2019). The review of the huge empirical literature on the different dimensions of GVCs is beyond the scope of this article. This survey aims to deepen our understanding of GVCs by measuring and mapping them mainly from a macro perspective, using international trade data, with special attention to the agriculture and food sectors, a subject that, as far as we know, has not yet been sum- marized. 2. DIFFERENT APPROACHES AND LEVELS OF ANALYSIS OF GVCs The high complexity and the different scales of analysis make it impossible to define, measure and map GVCs in a single way. This phenomenon of organiza- tionally fragmented international production has been subject to investigation in a wide range of academic dis- ciplines, including economic sociology, international economics, economic geography, international political economy, supply chain management and international business (see Kano et al., 2020). Therefore, the economic literature has evolved along different strands of research, using different approaches and levels of analysis. 2.1 GVCs as a multidisciplinary topic : development, geog- raphy, innovation The development literature, beyond the early dis- cussion on the role of the state in modern capitalism, has been widely influenced by the emergence of GVCs. Specifically, the debate mainly centred on the perspec- tives that GVCs would open to firms from developing countries to gain access to markets, to access knowledge and technology from abroad, and to “capture value” and part of the rents generated in the process (Davis et al., 2018; Kaplinsky, 2019). The challenge for local firms would be to “upgrade” by innovating to improve their products and processes, but also notably to “function- ally upgrade” by entering value chain segments offering larger shares of value added. More generally, local firms’ struggle would be to enter value chains niches with a stronger potential for learning and innovation, and for strengthening their technological and innovation capa- bilities (Morrison et al., 2008). Sometimes contrary to the interests of local firms, though sometimes fostering them, lead firms often have an interest to protect, appropriate, and create rents in the process of international production (Davis et al., 2018). Pathbreaking research put the concept of value chain governance at the core of the analysis and developed a theory that generates five different forms of GVC govern- ance: hierarchy, captive, relational, modular, and market, which range from high to low levels of explicit coordina- tion and power asymmetry (Gereffi et al., 2005). Three variables would determine how GVCs are governed, and these are: the complexity of transactions, the ability to codify transactions, and the capabilities in the supply- base. This theory, which itself draws on other streams of literature, like transaction costs economics, production networks, and technological capability and firm-level learning, has generated an infinite number of studies 96 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. aiming at measuring and testing it with quantitative and qualitative approaches (e.g. Brancati et al., 2021). Importantly, from all these approaches it has grad- ually emerged the idea that GVCs are not only a trade phenomenon. Given the variety of organizational arrangements prevailing in GVCs, and the inherent remarkable power asymmetries between lead firms and their different tiers of suppliers, the “relational dimen- sion” of GVCs has gained utmost importance (World Bank, 2020). Therefore, the focus necessarily shifts away from the mere allocation of value added across countries through anonymous exchanges of goods and services. In contrast, the characteristics of the agents participating in a GVC become crucial, and they necessarily influence the distribution of benefits and rents along the value chain. The introduction of such a relational concept of GVCs, echoed by the World Bank but originally devel- oped by economic sociologists, and international politi- cal economists like Gereffi, Sturgeon, Ponte and oth- ers, puts on a central stage a variety of themes, like for example the nature of the lead firms, i.e. multinational firms and foreign buyers and traders, and that of their suppliers, the institutional factors shaping the inter-firm relations and the location of global production, as well as the institutions affecting the decisions to invest in learn- ing and innovation and their effectiveness. Moreover, sometimes this literature has also crossed over a tradition of studies in economic geography that look at how the territorial context may influence enter- prise behavior and performance. In many instances, local clusters of firms interact with lead firms and their first-tier suppliers, generating the need to understand how the local and the global dimensions of value chains influence and condition each other. Thus, some authors studied the interface between enterprise clusters and GVCs, discovering their deep and mutually-influencing relationships (Bathelt et al., 2004; De Marchi et al., 2018; Giuliani et al., 2005; Humphrey and Schmitz, 2002; Pie- trobelli and Rabellotti, 2007). More recently, in the effort to understand the evolu- tion and the dynamics of GVCs and foresee the potential they offer to local firms and countries, the issue of inno- vation in GVCs has also been studied extensively. It has been shown how GVCs may act as conduits of knowl- edge, channels for technology transfer, and in the end, opportunities to learn and innovate (Lema, Pietrobelli and Rabellotti, 2019). A structured effort to understand the relationship between GVCs and national innova- tion systems has been attempted with various methods (Fagerberg et al., 2018, Pietrobelli and Rabellotti, 2011). Some authors concluded that a coevolution between GVCs and innovation systems would be constantly at play, though with remarkable sector-specific varieties (Lema et al., 2018, 2019 and 2021). Finally, the GVC approach is beginning to be employed also for the analysis of natural resource-based sectors, due to the remarkable restructuring and changes that these sectors are undergoing as a result of techno- logical changes and the growing relevance of local com- munities and environmental considerations (Kaplinsky and Morris, 2016; Pietrobelli et al., 2018; Katz and Pie- trobelli, 2018). 2.2 Firms level analysis Although it is undeniable that, in the real world, it is not countries or industries that participate in GVCs, but rather firms, the analysis of GVC at the firm-level is still at an “infant stage” (Antràs, 2021) and fall well behind the measurements’ advances put forward by the litera- ture based on country-sector level data (see Section 3). This is mainly because of the partial lack of good quality firm-level data, not to mention its scarce accessibility and the lack of standardisation of the different (proprietary) firm-level sources. Indeed, to accomplish a fully integrat- ed picture of the back-and-forth features of firms’ global linkages, a vast array of countries’ harmonized informa- tion is needed, which comes from different sources, such as custom-level data together with census-level informa- tion. For instance, in order to build up a firm-level coun- terpart of the country–industry GVC index of backward participation, one has to collect, for the exporting firm, information on: the percentage value of imported inter- mediate goods on the total value of intermediate goods used in the production; country of imports; the exports’ destination. And such a calculation, already difficult to achieve with the available data, will only provide infor- mation on a single portion of the trade in value added at the firm level1. Going beyond the mere calculation of a backward participation index, census-level information would then be needed to link a firm’s trade behaviour to several dimensions of firms’ heterogeneity. Notwithstanding the relative lack of good qual- ity data, in recent years, a few papers, mostly relying on general firm-level surveys, have tried to carry out empir- ical analyses to investigate the firms’ involvement in GVCs and their impact on performance. A list of recent papers and firm-level datasets applied for GVCs empiri- cal analysis is reported in the Appendix. In order to provide a brief overview of the most recent findings, we will focus here on contributions 1 On the virtual impossibility of coming up with analogous firm-level measures of forward participation, see Antràs, 2021. 97 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food related to the analysis of GVC participation and posi- tioning at the firm level2 (the analysis at the country- sector level is presented in Section 3). These firms’ level analyses still lack a unified framework and unit of anal- ysis. This is due to the fact that, in general, studies rely on different datasets (mainly firms’ balance sheets, sur- veys, etc.), each containing different information. As a result, there are currently several measures of the GVC participation index of firms, without a unified frame- work. Among the few studies, it is useful to distinguish between the ones ending up with a firm’s participation index similar to the one envisaged by the input-output based literature (see Section 3) from those whose index- es rely on firms’ internationalization modes. In the first category, Veuglers et al. (2013) use as a proxy of a firm’s participation the percentage of imported intermediates over total inputs. The second typology of studies focus- es on the firms’ internationalization operation modes as a proxy of GVC involvement. Although ending up with different proxies of the GVC participation index, those studies share a certain degree of common ground based on the assumption that a two-way trader firm can be univocally defined as a firm participating in GVCs. Giunta et al. (2021), following on from Veugelers et al. (2013), divide firms’ participation in GVCs into two categories: i) single forward mode, when firms are only exporters of intermediates; ii) dual-mode when firms are both importers of materials and services and exporters of intermediates or final goods. Similarly, Agostino et al. (2016) take into account the variety of modes of inter- nationalization associated with the operation of GVCs, such as: exports only, intermediate goods imports only, both exports and imports (two-way trade) and interna- tional production. Baldwin and Yan (2014), investigat- ing Canadian manufacturing firms, consider as involved in GVCs those firms which engage simultaneously in importing and exporting activities. Del Prete et al. (2017) analyse a panel of manufacturing firms in Egypt and Morocco. In their empirical investigation, firms involved in GVC activities are international traders that received an internationally recognized quality certifica- tion. Brancati et al. (2017) and Agostino et al. (2020), by using a representative sample of Italian industrial firms, investigate the GVC participation index by look- ing at exporters of semi-finished goods/components and two-way traders. Moreover, they also infer firm GVC participation by using a question in the survey that asks about the existence of “long-lasting and significant rela- 2 We do not overview here the vast literature based on case studies since their findings are not immediately comparable with the ones based on representative samples (for an overview of the literature based on case studies, see Ponte, 2019). tionships with foreign companies” (Brancati et al., 2017). Giovannetti et al. (2015) rely on this same question (i.e., a direct answer from a firm’s representative) to proxy the manufacturing firm’s participation in GVCs. Likewise, Giovannetti and Marvasi (2016), in their investigation of firms operating in the Italian food industry. Despite the variety of GVC participation measures adopted in the firm-level applied literature, a strik- ing regularity of results emerges: firms’ participation in GVC leads to productivity gains activated by sev- eral channels. Exporting allows a firm to exploit scale economies, acquire new technologies abroad and learn by exporting. Furthermore, other benefits may accrue to firms active in GVCs through imports of foreign inputs: cost saving, technology transfer, higher input quality and possible complementarities with domestic inputs. Two-way trading may have the additional advantage of exploiting sunk cost complementarity and other posi- tive interactions between export and import activities. Finally, as is highlighted by the literature on firms’ inter- nationalization, productivity gains are ordered: the more advanced the firm’s mode of GVC participation, the greater the productivity premium. The literature on firms’ positioning in GVCs distin- guishes between final firms - those selling their output on the end market – and supplier firms – those selling their intermediate products to other firms3 (Accetturo et al., 2011; Agostino et al., 2015, 2016; Veugelers et al., 2013; Giovannetti et al., 2015). Why do these different organizational firms’ modes (final and supplier) need to be taken into account? There are at least three important reasons: i) suppliers, mostly small and medium enter- prises, constitute the bulk of the productive system in the large majority of countries; ii) the impact of shocks differs according to the firms’ positioning in the GVCs (Altomonte di Mauro et al., 2012; Békés et al., 2011; Acc- etturo and Giunta, 2016); iii) final and supplier firms substantially differ in terms of economic performance as well as the benefits that can be obtained by operating in the GVCs. Despite its relevance, the latter issue has been brought to the fore by very few papers, mainly because of the relative lack of microdata, making it difficult to carry out a proper investigation. Kimura (2002), Raz- zolini and Vannoni (2011), Veugelers et al., (2013) docu- ment a large profitability and productivity gap between supplier and final firms. Yet, some researchers have highlighted the heterogeneous behaviour and perfor- mance of supplier firms (Accetturo et al., 2011). Among 3 The exact definition used is: suppliers are firms producing to order for other firms. These firms are positioned in GVCs when they produce to order for other firms located abroad. 98 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. these, Agostino et al. (2015), who, based on a representa- tive sample of Italian manufacturing firms, confirm that, on average, GVC supplier firms are less productive than final firms. However, since the “ability” of supplier firms increases, their productivity shortfall diminishes. In fact, for those who succeed in both exporting and innovating, Agostino et al. (2015) prove there is no statistically sig- nificant difference in productivity between suppliers and final firms. Finally, a “GVC effect” in terms of superior technical efficiency or productivity can also be traced by comparing suppliers operating on local markets vis a vis with suppliers operating in the GVCs (Agostino et al., 2020; Veugelers et al., 2013). 3. COUNTRY AND SECTORAL GVCs ANALYSIS Parallel to the firm analysis of GVCs, international economists developed various approaches to map and measure these chains at the country and sectoral level by relying on different methods and data sources. The empirical literature in this field mainly follows three approaches that provide different points of view on the quantification of GVCs and present both strengths and caveats in terms of complexity, accuracy and coverage (Amador and Cabral, 2016).4 The first one compares international trade statistics of parts and components with trade in final products (see the seminal works of Yeats, 1998; Ng and Yeats, 1999; Athukorala, 2005; and Gaulier et al., 2007, among others). The second approach looks at the customs statistics on processing trade (see the works on the US processing trade by Feenstra et al., 2000; Clark, 2006; and Swenson, 2005; those on EU pro- cessing trade by Görg, 2000; Baldone et al., 2001, 2007; Helg and Tajoli, 2005; Egger and Egger, 2005; those on China by Lemoine and Ünal Kesenci, 2004; and Xing, 2012; and recently Kee et al., 2016; Koopman et al., 2012; Jiang, 2021; Luck, 2019). The third method consid- ers classical input-output (I-O) tables, sometimes com- plemented with import penetration statistics computed from trade data. Using these I-O matrices, Feenstra and Hanson (1996) developed the first measure of foreign content of domestic production (computed as the share of imported inputs in production or total inputs, often used as a measure of outsourcing). This measure has been adopted in many subsequent works, such as Campa and Goldberg (1997), Hijzen (2005), Egger et al. (2001), Egger and Egger (2003), and Feenstra and Jensen (2012). Exploiting the same data, Hummels et al., 2001 formu- lated the second measure of fragmentation, which focus- 4 For details of the three types of data, see the survey by Amador and Cabral (2016). es on the direct and indirect import content of exports, labelled “vertical specialization” that has been applied or updated in other studies (see among others Chen et al., 2005; Zhang and Sun, 2007; Chen and Chang, 2006; Amador and Cabral, 2009). However, traditional I-O tables by themselves are no longer able to capture the complexity of the fragmentation and the mechanism ruling trade in intermediate inputs. With the target of tracing value-added trade flows across countries, a strand of work - which has recently become very popu- lar - has therefore combined information from custom offices with national input-output tables to construct global I-O tables (see the works of Hummels et al., 2001; Johnson and Noguera, 2012; Miroudot and Ragouss- sis, 2009; Koopman et  al., 2010, 2014; Foster Mc Gregor and Stehrer, 2013). Since the tables contain information on supply–use relations between industries and across countries, we can identify the vertical structure of inter- national production sharing and measure cross-border value flows for a country or region. Since the flows of goods and services within the global production chains are not always reflected in con- ventional international trade measures, many initiatives and efforts have recently been addressed to measure international fragmentation using trade in value added. The Appendix shows the main available databases. 3.1 Decomposition methodologies and trade in value added components In parallel, new methodologies have also been devel- oped to exploit data from multi-region input-output (MRIO) tables. These methodologies decompose gross trade flows in different value-added components and allow new GVC indicators to be computed. One of the most widely used decomposition meth- odologies is that proposed by Koopman, Wang and Wei (KWW) (2014), who fully decompose gross exports into various sources of value added and connect official gross statistics to value-added measures of trade. Specifically, KWW (2014) break gross exports down into nine differ- ent components of domestic value added (domestic val- ue embedded in a country’s exports) and foreign value added (foreign value embedded in a country’s exports) plus double-counted items (that arise when intermediate goods cross borders multiple times). The result is a com- plete picture of the value-added generation process in which various preceding formulas for measuring value- added trade are systematically integrated into a single accounting framework.5 This method encompasses most 5 For technical details, see Koopman, Wang and Wei (2010 and 2014). 99 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food of the methodologies previously proposed in the litera- ture (e.g. Hummels et al., 2001; Daudin et al., 2011; and Johnson and Noguera, 2012). A second methodology is that developed by Borin and Mancini (BM) (2015, 2019). They extend the KWW (2014) methodology providing exhaustive and rigorous value-added decompositions of exports at the aggre- gate, bilateral and sectoral levels which are consistent with the KWW framework and overcome shortcomings that affect the KWW decomposition and other previous attempts to obtain a bilateral counterpart (such as Wang et al, 2013).6 Using the Koopman et al. (2014) methodolog y extended by BM (2015, 2019), two key value added com- ponents of gross exports are traditionally selected to provide measures of country and sectoral GVC partici- pation: - The indirect domestic value added (DVX), that is, the share of domestic value added in intermediate goods further re-exported by the partner country. It meas- ures the joint participation of the trade partners in a GVC since it contains the exporter’s value added of a specific sector that passes through the direct importer for a (or some) stage(s) of production before it reaches third countries. More specifically, it captures the contribution of the domestic country to the exports of other countries; - The foreign value added (FVA) used in the produc- tion of a country’s exports, that is, the share of value added provided by intermediate inputs imported from abroad and then exported in the form of final or intermediate goods. It measures the contribution of the foreign country to the country’s exports. 3.2 GVC participation and positioning indicators7 An important question raised in the GVC empirical literature is to what extent single countries and sectors are involved in international production networks. The Hummels et al. (2001) measure of “vertical specialization” (the VS measure), mentioned above, is probably one of the first and most popular measures of participation of a country in the phases of international 6 In particular, Borin and Mancini (2015, 2019) provide proper defini- tions for some components that are incorrectly specified by KWW: i) the domestic value added that is directly (and indirectly) absorbed by the final demand of the importing country; ii) the foreign value add- ed in exports; iii) the double counted items produced abroad. They also overcome the main problems that make imprecise and at least partially incorrect the value added decompositions of bilateral exports previously proposed in the literature. 7 This paragraph is largely based on Nenci (2020). production chains. However, this is a partial measure of participation in global value chains since it only consid- ers the backward linkages (i.e. it measures the import content of a country’s exports). Therefore, they also sug- gest considering the exports of intermediate products later processed and re-exported as the VS1 measure. Following the seminal article of Hummels et al. (2001), various measures of a country’s integration in international production networks have been proposed. Using some of the trade in value added components of their decomposition, KWW (2010) propose one of the most widely used indicators of GVC participation in the field literature. They calculate GVC participation by using the trade in value added components mentioned above: the foreign value added (FVA) component and the indirect domestic value added (DVX) component. More specifically, FVA is referred to as a measure of “backward participation”, given that it measures import- ed intermediate inputs that are used to generate output for export. DVX captures the contribution of the domes- tic sector to the exports of other countries and indicates the extent of involvement in GVC for relatively upstream industries. Therefore, it can be considered as a measure of “forward GVC participation”. By expressing both measures as a percentage of exports, the formula for GVC participation is as follows: 𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 = 𝐹𝐹𝐺𝐺𝐹𝐹 + 𝐷𝐷𝐺𝐺𝐷𝐷 𝐺𝐺𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝐺𝐺𝐺𝐺 𝐸𝐸𝐸𝐸𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃𝐺𝐺 The larger the ratio, the greater the intensity of involvement of a particular country (or sector) in GVCs. Other studies have measured a country’s forward GVC participation by identifying the export compo- nents that are later re-exported by the direct import- er (see, among others, Rahman and Zhao, 2013; and Ahmed et al., 2017). However, these contributions rely on the KWW decomposition of gross exports. As dis- cussed, this methodology does not properly allocate countries’ exports between the share that is directly absorbed by importers and the one that is re-exported abroad. The resulting measures of GVC participation are thus imprecise. Borin and Mancini (2019) calculated their measure of overall GVC participation. This is given by the sum of a ‘backward’ component, corresponding to the VS Index, and a ‘forward’ component, the VS1 indicator suggested by Hummels et al. (2001): GVC overall Participation = GVCbackward + GVCforward =VS + VS1 100 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. In this work, we refer to this indicator to measure and map GVCs in the agriculture and food sectors. Recently, a strand of the international trade litera- ture has developed measures of the positioning of coun- tries and industries in GVCs (see Fally, 2012; Antràs et al., 2012; Antràs and Chor, 2013; Fally and Hillberry, 2015; Alfaro et al., 2019; Miller and Temurshoev, 2017; Wang et al., 2017). Using the global Input-Output tables, with information on the various entries, it is now possible to compute the upstreamness or downstream- ness of specific industries and countries. To do this, a common approach is to consider the extent to which a country-industry pair sells its output for final use to consumers worldwide or sells intermediate inputs to other producing sectors in the world. A sector that sells disproportionately to final consumers would appear to be downstream in value chains, whereas a sector that sells little to final consumers is more likely to be upstream in value chains. Following this approach, Antràs and Chor (2018) present the two GVC positioning measures most popu- lar in the literature. The first indicator is a measure of distance or upstreamness of a production sector from final demand which was developed by Fally (2012), Antràs et al. (2012) and Antràs and Chor (2013).8 Fally’s model, as well as the variation proposed by Antràs et al. (2012), capture the average number of production stages by pegging the endpoint of the sequence at final con- sumption, which enables us to measure the distance to final demand of a product along the production chains. More specifically, this measure aggregates information on the extent to which “an industry in a given country produces goods that are sold directly to final consum- ers or that are sold to other sectors that themselves sell disproportionately to final consumers. A relatively upstream sector is thus one that sells a small share of its output to final consumers and sells disproportion- ately to other sectors that themselves sell relatively lit- tle to final consumers” (Antràs and Chor, 2018). The second measure, originally proposed by Fally (2012), is based on a country-industry pair’s use of intermediate inputs and primary factors of production. It captures the distance or downstreamness of a given sector from the economy’s primary factors of production (or sources of value-added). According to this measure, an industry in each country is downstream if its production pro- cess embodies a larger amount of intermediate inputs relative to its use of primary factors of production. Con- versely, if an industry relies disproportionately on val- 8 Although the arguments used to develop the index differ in Fally (2012) and Antràs and Chor (2013), Antràs et al. (2012) emphasize that the resulting indexes are equivalent. ue-added from primary factors of production, then this industry is relatively upstream. In this work, we adopt the first measure – the upstreamness indicator (Fally, 2012; Antràs et al., 2012; and Antràs and Chor, 2013) – computed by Nenci (2020) at the country-industry level for the “Agriculture” and “Food & Beverages” sectors to present some stylized facts for the countries in the Eora dataset for the period 1995-2015. 4. MAPPING GVC PARTICIPATION AND POSITIONING IN AGRICULTURE AND FOOD: SOME STYLIZED FACTS Focusing on the global I-O tables and trade in value added data, this section aims to show some recent facts and trends on GVCs using the GVC participation indi- cator and the upstreamness positioning indicator for the “Agriculture” and “Food and Beverages” sectors. To do this, we refer to the indicators computed by Nenci (2020) from Eora data at the country-industry level relying on Borin and Mancini (2019)’s extension of the Koopman et al. (2014) methodology. These indicators are available for 190 countries in the period 1990-2015.9 4.1 Mapping GVC participation Using Nenci (2020)’s data, Dellink et al. (2020) show how GVC participation between 1995 and 2008 is glob- ally around 30-35 percent for both agriculture and food and beverages (Figure 2), although with significant vari- ations across countries (highlighted by the shaded areas in the figure). However, further integration essentially stalled in the subsequent period. This trend is similar for both sectors. This may be because common factors driving GVC participation dominate sectoral and struc- tural change effects. Hence, although agricultural com- modities are perhaps less complex than manufacturing products, fragmentation of the associated value chains has also occurred in the agricultural sectors. This has important implications for developing and less devel- oped countries: although they cannot compete inter- nationally in the manufacturing sectors of final goods, they can still participate in GVCs and increase exports. The effects of the 2008 crisis are evident in both sec- tors. These effects were also widespread across regions: 9 Due to some inconsistencies in the EORA data, the Republic of the Sudan and the Republic of Zimbabwe are not included in the empirical analysis. These inconsistences are attributable to missing, incomplete, and conflicting raw data that can lead to distorted (i.e., not consistent and unbalanced) IO tables for a country in a given year. 101 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food until 2008, about 7 percent of the countries in the data- base observed a decline in GVC participation. These are primarily economies affected by war, droughts and other major disturbances. After 2008, only 8 percent of the economies – a widely varying group of mostly relatively small countries – further continued their integration in the global economy. The long-term increase in GVC participation comes with the overall rise of gross exports of agricultural and food commodities. Figure 3 shows the composi- tion of gross exports divided into: backward-linked GVC exports, that is the sum of FVA across countries; forward-linked GVC exports, which are exports that will later be re-exported, aggregated across countries; non-GVC exports, which are exports that do not flow through GVCs but are absorbed in the destination coun- try. The sum of the three components (plus some pure double-counting) equals gross exports. While roughly two-thirds of the export value is not part of a GVC, both backward and forward linkages contribute significantly to the export value. Global exports of food and bever- ages are roughly twice as large as those of agricultural commodities and, in absolute terms, the rapid increase in food exports after 2002 is remarkable (see Figure 3, Panel B). As expected, GVC linkages in agriculture are mostly forward linked, since agricultural products serve as basic ingredients in other production processes. Food and beverages are much more in the middle and at the end of a value chain and include the processing of agri- cultural inputs. The backward linkages in food and bev- erages are mainly imports from agricultural commodi- ties. In contrast, the backward linkages of agriculture refer to imports of inputs for agricultural production and are linked to international trade in fertilizers and seeds as well as to the increased servitization of the economy. The forward linkages in food and beverages are mainly exports by the sector itself – agricultural commodities are lightly processed in one country, then re-exported and further processed and distributed. However, other downstream sectors embed value added created in the food and beverage industry, such as, for example, sugar in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics (Dellink et al., 2020). Finally, it is important to underline that the exports of agriculture and food sectors can also stimulate value added creation in other sectors, just as agriculture and food value added can be part of the exports of another downstream sector. In both the agriculture and food sectors, the biggest share of sectoral FVA is provided by services (42 percent and 38 percent in 2015, respec- tively, see Figure 4). This means that any boost to GVC participation in the two sectors leads to increased value- added creation in some foreign services sectors. In agri- culture, a significant share of foreign inputs is delivered by chemicals and raw materials – this mainly reflects the globalization of the seeds market. In the food and bever- ages industry, the second largest FVA input share is agri- cultural commodities (20 percent). The share of manu- facturing in FVA is also sizable in both sectors (this includes machinery). Finally, while foreign inputs from the food sector into agriculture are small, intra-sectoral trade in the food and beverages industry is more sub- stantial (Dellink et al., 2020). Moving on to GVC analysis at the country level, Fig- ure 5 reports the GVC participation indicators for the 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Panel A. Agriculture Range of country values Global GVC participation rate 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Panel B. Food & beverages Range of country values Global GVC participation rate Figure 2. Evolution of global GVC participation rates in Agriculture and Food sectors. Notes: the shaded areas show the range of country values. Source: Dellink, Dervisholli and Nenci (2020) based on Nenci (2020)’s data. 102 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. agricultural sector for each country in the world in 2015. Th e European countries present, on average, the high- est rate of GVC participation (about 40–45  percent of its total exports, on average, considering both the foreign value added and its domestic value added content embed- ded in third country exports). Despite low trade shares at the global level, the African region turns out to be deeply involved in agriculture GVC participation too (about 37 percent, on average). Th is is higher than the average val- ues for America and Asia and is consistent with the rela- tive importance of the African continent in the global agri-food value chains highlighted by the literature in the fi eld. However, we can also detect country heterogeneity in both areas, with Estonia and Latvia showing the high- est share of GVC related trade in agriculture in Europe and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. Con- versely, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CSI) shows the lowest shares (except for Belarus). Figure 6 shows a similar picture for the GVC partic- ipation indicators for the food and beverages sector. In this case, apart from the usual heterogeneity by country, the African and the European continent share a similar degree of involvement in GVC trade (about 40 percent of their respective total exports). 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Bl n U SD Panel A. Agriculture Backward-linked GVC exports Forward-linked GVC exports Non-GVC exports 0 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Bl n U SD Panel B. Food & beverages Backward-linked GVC exports Forward-linked GVC exports Non-GVC exports Figure 3. Composition of gross exports in Agriculture and Food sectors. Note: values calculated at the country level and then aggregated. Source: Dellink, Dervisholli and Nenci (2020) based on Nenci (2020)’s data. AgricultureAgriculture 12% AgricultureAgriculture Food and Food and Food and beveragesbeveragesbeverages 5% Chemicals Chemicals Chemicals and raw and raw materialsmaterials 22% Services Services Services Services 42% Other Other manufacturingmanufacturingmanufacturing 19% AgricultureAgriculture Agriculture Agriculture 20% Food and beverages 14% Chemicals and raw materials 12% Services 38% Other manufacturing 16% Food and beverages Figure 4. Origin of foreign value added in Agriculture and Food sectors (2015). Source: Authors’ elaboration based on Nenci (2020)’s data 103 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food 4.2 Mapping GVC positioning Another valuable way to analyse and map GVCs is understanding the positioning of countries and/or industries within GVCs. At a descriptive level, these indicators provide information on the specialization of a country in relatively upstream activities or ones that are more proximate to fi nal demand. Figure 7 shows the evolution of the upstreamness indicator at the sectoral level. Unsurprisingly, agricul- ture has a higher score on upstreamness (measuring the distance of the sector from fi nal demand in terms of the number of production stages) than the food and beverag- es sector. While the median for agriculture is positioned more than 2.7 stages upstream of fi nal demand, the one for food and beverages is constantly two stages lower. Th is positioning indicator closely depends on the length of the chains: between 2000 and 2008, the upstreamness of the two sectors rose modestly but steadily, suggesting an increase in fragmentation in production. Moving to an analysis by region-country, Figure 8 shows the degree of countries’ upstreamness for the agri- culture sector in 2015. In this case, Africa, America and Europe share the same average degree of upstreamness (about 3 stages of production from the fi nal consumers), which is above the average world level of 2.25. At the country level, the most upstream countries in Europe are Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (their agriculture produc- tion is, on average, concentrated on activities that are up to 5 stages away from the fi nal consumers), whereas in Africa a pick of about 4 stages of production is registered for the agricultural sector in Ethiopia. Figure 9 shows the degree of countries’ upstream- ness for the food and beverage sector. As expected, the average degree of upstreamness for Africa and Europe is lower than in the agricultural sector (less than 2 stages of production from fi nal consumers). At the country level, the food and beverage sector also shows a lower degree of heterogeneity. The most upstream country Figure 5. GVC participation for the Agricultural sector by country (2015). Source: Montalbano and Nenci (2022). Figure 6. GVC participation for the Food and beverages sector by country (2015). Source: Montalbano and Nenci (2022). 1,5 1,7 1,9 2,1 2,3 2,5 2,7 2,9 3,1 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Agriculture Food & Beverages Figure 7. GVC upstreamness at global level. Source: Authors’ elabo- ration based on Nenci (2020)’s data. Figure 8. Upstreamness of the agricultural sector by country (2015). Source: Montalbano and Nenci (2022) based on Nenci (2020)’s data. 104 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. in Europe is Moldova together with the small Euro- pean States (about 4 stages away from fi nal consumers), whereas in Africa again, about 4 stages of production away from fi nal consumers are registered in Ethiopia. 5. IMPACTS OF GVCs ON AGRICULTURE AND FOOD PERFORMANCE: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE Th e empirical analyses on the impacts of agricultur- al and food GVCs have traditionally relied on case stud- ies (Salvatici and Nenci, 2017). Th anks to the availability of MRIO tables and the possibility to compute a new set of GVC indicators based on trade in value added data, scholars have recently acquired the possibility to benefi t from true global analyses. Th ese global analyses look at diff erent kinds of eff ects. A preliminary distinction is between economic upgrading, usually defi ned in terms of effi ciency of the production process or characteris- tics of the product or activities performed (Humphrey and Schmitz, 2002), and social upgrading oft en referred to improvements in the rights and entitlements of work- ers as social actors, as anchored in the ILO decent work framework, and/or enhancement of outcomes related to employment and pay, gender and the environment (Mil- berg and Winkler, 2010; Barrientos et al., 2011; Gereffi and Lee, 2016). As for economic upgrading, some studies have ana- lysed the role of intermediate goods in generating a posi- tive impact on the total factor productivity of industries (see, inter alia, Bas and Strauss-Kahn, 2014; Halpern et al., 2015; Olper et al., 2017). Empirical results from Southeast Asia suggest that foreign sourcing in the pro- duction of exports is a complement to, rather than a substitute for, the creation of domestic value added in exports (Lopez-Gonzalez, 2016). Other studies confi rm- ing the positive relationship between the use of foreign imported inputs and an increase in fi rm productivity growth in developing countries are: Amiti and Konings (2007) for Indonesia; Kasahara and Rodrigue (2008) for Chilean manufacturing plants; Halpern et al. (2011) for Hungary; Topalova and Khandelwal (2011) for India; Montalbano et al. (2018a) for Latin America and the Caribbean. Constantinescu et al. (2019) and World Bank (2020) also underline the signifi cance of backward link- ages for growth and labour productivity. By focusing on the GVCs’ participation in agricultural and food and beverages sectors at the global level for a relatively long time span (1995–2015), Montalbano and Nenci (2022) confi rm that, on average and ceteris paribus, there is a positive relationship between changes in agriculture val- ue added per worker and changes in both agriculture and food GVC participation, both backward and forward. Th ese outcomes complement similar established empiri- cal evidence on manufacturing and confi rm the positive eff ect of GVC participation on domestic value added with reference to both backward and forward linkages. Some scholars have interpreted the notion of eco- nomic upgrading as a need for targeting specifi c pro- duction stages and “moving up along the value chain” (Kowalski et al., 2015). This debate has been largely infl uenced by the “Smiley curve” thesis10 and has been interpreted as implying that in order to increase the domestic value added share, it may be benefi cial to move away from the assembly or manufacturing parts of the chain to be involved in “more sophisticated” down- stream stages. This interpretation looks in principle inconsistent with the principle of comparative advan- tage. Th is latter argues that the most profi table segments of the value chain should be jointly determined by the characteristics of the production process as well as the relative skills and resource endowments of fi rms and countries in question. Unfortunately, the empirical anal- yses on the economic eff ects of GVC positioning are still rare. Montalbano and Nenci (2022), using global indica- tors of upstreamness for agriculture and food sectors for the usual long time span (1995–2015), highlight a robust negative association cross-country between agriculture value added and the relative distance from fi nal consum- ers. Although this could be seen as possible confi rma- tion of the fact that moving up the agriculture and food value chains could be seen as a good strategy for partici- pating countries, the authors warn that GVCs are get- 10 Th is argument has been made in business management and refers to a graphical depiction similar to a smile where the two ends of the value chain show higher value added than the middle part of the value chain. For a deeper analysis of the “smiley curve”, see Elms and Low (2013). Figure 9. Upstreamness of the Food and Beverages sector by coun- try (2015). Source: Montalbano and Nenci (2022) based on Nenci (2020)’s data. 105 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food ting longer over time and additional investigations are needed in this field. As for social upgrading, the existing literature on GVCs often implicitly assumes that economic upgrad- ing will automatically translate into social upgrading through better wages and working conditions (Gereffi and Lee, 2016; Knorringa and Pegler 2006; de Olivei- ra 2008). However, pressures to reduce costs might indeed lead employers to combine economic upgrading with social downgrading (for example, by outsourcing employment to an exploitative labour contractor or delo- calizing in countries with lower labour standards, (Bar- rientos et al., 2011). Preliminary empirical evidence con- firms that firm performance is associated with improve- ments in working conditions (World Bank, 2015). Unfor- tunately, this strand of the literature, although addressing a key issue in the GVC debate, is still largely based on case studies and anecdotal evidence. 6. CRITICAL ISSUES ON GVCs There are some critical aspects that are currently affecting the GVCs – global but also agri-food ones - which may affect and shape the future of GVCs. They include: the rise of protectionism, technological develop- ment, environmental issues, trends in emerging econo- mies, and recently the Covid-19 pandemic (Antras, 2020; OECD, 2017; Fortunato, 2020). Among the issues identi- fied by scholars, we want to focus on the following: the bidirectional nexus between GVCs and trade policy, the advent of new technologies that have become widespread in recent years and the impact of COVID-19. 6.1 Trade policies and GVCs A critical and important issue in the analysis of GVCs is that of the relationship with trade policies. Recent developments in international trade litera- ture have attempted to shed light on the interrelation between trade policies and trade patterns within region- al and GVCs. GVC-trade policy nexus is bidirectional: the reduction in trade barriers has been identified as one of the determinants of the spread and diffusion of GVCs (Antràs, 2020a) and, conversely, the global fragmenta- tion of production influences trade policy (Goldberg and Pavcnik, 2016; Blanchard et al., 2016). 6.1.1 Impact of trade policy on GVCs The literature highlighted two main potential effects of trade policy on GVCs: a) a “magnification effects”, whereby goods that cross national borders multiple times incur multiple tariff costs. As such, tariffs are applied to gross imports, even though the value added content may be only a fraction of this amount. Different ways of inter- national involvement, notably upstream or downstream participation, shape the extent to which countries are affected by this cost magnification (Yi 2003, 2009; Mura- dov 2017); b) a “chain effect”, which influences all the stages of a GVC and, consequently, a country’s backward and forward participation. In terms of forward partici- pation, a depressing impact is expected on the domestic value added content of a country embodied in partner countries’ exports. This is because, by reducing the gains for foreign producers of final goods, tariffs also hurt their upstream suppliers. In terms of backward participation, when import-competing sectors use foreign inputs, tariffs allow to pass some protectionist rents from the domestic producers on to upstream foreign input suppliers. This could represent an incentive for foreign suppliers to move to those countries/sectors to get the benefits of the pro- tection (Blanchard et al., 2016; Balié et al., 2019). This may have important policy implications since trade poli- cies no longer exclusively depend on the location of the imported goods but on the nationality of the value added content embodied in traded goods. Consequently, there may be a need to reformulate trade policy priorities, especially in the more downstream food sector (Montal- bano and Nenci, 2020a). Differently from the standard narrative, which focuses mainly on gross exports’ performance, trade policy should thus consider that access to imports is an essential component of value-added exports. This implies broadening the scope of tariff and non-tariff trade policies, including softening barriers to imports to facilitate access to world-class inputs (Montalbano et al., 2018b). Moreover, integration into GVCs should be pro- moted, especially upstream integration that implies pro- ducing quality inputs for other countries’ productions and exports. OECD (2016) finds that the greatest effects were found to be on trade in intermediates for low and middle-income countries and suggests that protectionist policies, particularly in the form of tariff escalation, are likely to hamper the development of GVCs. Greenville et al. (2017) outline that the levels of tariffs charged and faced, along with sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and other technical  barriers  to trade (TBT) were correlated with lower GVC participation and suggest that higher levels of barriers to the flow of agricultural and food products across borders are associated with lower levels of agricultural and food GVC participation as the cost of being part of GVCs for individual countries increases and thereby decrease their competitiveness. 106 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. To quantify the effects of trade policies on coun- tries’ economic activity, prices and welfare, computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have been adopted. Some of these models allow for supply chain cross-bor- der linkages, including the GTAP-SC (“Supply-Chains”) model (Walmsley et al., 2014) and the IESC model (Minor and Walmsley, 2017) which use a nested Arm- ington demand structure to distinguish between imports for different usages from different source regions. Anti- miani et al. (2018b) develop the GTAP-VA (“Value Add- ed”) model to account for trade in value added flows when assessing trade policy shocks. In the same vein, the OECD-METRO model includes GVC indicators sim- ilar to the approach used in the OECD-WTO TiVA data- base (OECD, 2018). A key empirical issue in this literature is that applied tariffs alone are not useful metrics to assess trade protection when intermediate trade is pervasive. Diakantoni et al. (2017) argue that after falling into relative obscurity, at least from a normative perspec- tive, effective protection rates (EPRs) may be back to the central stage as international trade moves from “trade in (final) goods” to “trade in tasks”. From a national account perspective, what is internationally traded is the value added (the primar y inputs) and the adequate measure of trade distortion is no more the nominal tariff structure on the output, but the effective rate of “protection” on value added. Feenstra (2017) extends the concept of effective protection to reflect the impact of import tariffs on the foreign value added in an industry’s exports. More recently, Anti- miani et al. (2018a) define in a general equilibrium framework different benchmarks with which to meas- ure restrictiveness, according to where the value added originates: the resulting Value Added Trade Restric- tiveness Indexes (VATRIs) are equivalent to the actual protection policies in terms of the impact on domestic or foreign value added embedded in imports. Similar- ly, Fusacchia et al. (2021) define an index capturing the effects that the tariff structure has on exporting firms that rely on imported intermediate inputs. Rouzet and Miroudot (2013) compute the ’cumulative tariff ’ (i.e. the accumulated burden of upstream tariffs for a given importer), which quantifies the total cost-push effect of direct and indirect tariffs, taking into account the upstream GVC structure. Muradov (2017) extends the concept to account for indirect bilateral trade flows and proposes two alternative measures to account for related costs, the cumulative tariff at origin and desti- nation. 6.1.2 Effects of GVCs on trade policy As far as the political economy is concerned, there is growing evidence that GVCs affect trade policy. Antràs and Staiger (2012) make a theoretical contribution by examining trade agreements in the presence of offshor- ing. Their findings support the view that terms-of-trade motives for cooperation are no longer sufficient when off-shoring is relevant and suggest the need for deep integration, with more individualized agreements that can better reflect member-specific needs (Ruta, 2017). A key issue in this respect is the provision of “rules of origin”. These imply that trade agreements can have systemic consequences for the allocation of produc- tion across countries. Despite the rules of origin, when the share of intermediate goods increases between a non-member country and a member country, the trade diversion of exports from the non-member country to the member country is largely mitigated. Conversely, the disruption created by trade wars and dismantled agree- ments may be transmitted to other trading partners and may not be easily avoided by reorganizing buyer–seller relationships (Salvatici, 2020). Blanchard et al. (2016) develop a value-added approach to modelling tariff setting with GVCs, in which optimal policy depends on the nationality of val- ue-added content embedded in home and foreign final goods. There are two mechanisms in play: the importing country’s incentive to manipulate the terms of trade is reduced if foreign producers use inputs from the home country in production, and when domestic producers use foreign inputs in production, some of the protec- tionist rents from higher tariffs accrue to foreign input suppliers. They find strong empirical support for the predictions of the theory stating that discretionary tar- iffs decrease in the domestic content of foreign-produced final goods and the foreign content of domestically- produced final goods. Following the predictions of this model and emphasizing political economy considera- tions, Ludema et al. (2019) and Bown et al. (2020) find similar empirical results using firm-level GVC interlinks and anti-dumping duty and confirm that GVCs matter for trade policy determination. Lastly, Raimondi et al. (2021) extend the focus on the agricultural and food sectors by assessing how GVC participation affects trade policy. Besides tariffs, they include the bilateral index of non-tariff measures (NTMs) for both SPS requirements and TBT measures which have the greatest impact on trade for most agri- food sectors. They find that a rise in domestic value add- ed (but not the foreign value added) reduces both tariffs and NTM regulatory distance. In their sample of 150 107 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food countries for the period 1995-2015, a movement from low to high domestic value added induces a reduction in tariffs/NTMs of about 30%. International trade of agro-food products is influ- enced not only by tariff and non-tariff measures, but also by the role played by domestic agricultural policies in determining the competitiveness of the sector. Distor- tive agricultural policies that promote subsidies for the use of inputs or subsidies outputs addressing directly the producers or the sector as a whole have been found to have a negative effect on GVC participation and on domestic value added creation (Greenville et al., 2017). Along with protectionist policies, agro-food trade faces other economic barriers such as standards and intellec- tual property rights. Where governments lack the capac- ity to enforce regulations, MNCs may privately enforce standards necessary both to avoid the risk from media exposure of poor working conditions and to ensure the health and safety of the products all along the GVC. To date, little empirical evidence exists on the relationship between private standards and a country’s participation in GVCs. Though some studies have found that compli- ance with private standards can have positive effects on firms’ trade growth and employment (Colen et al., 2012; Otsuki, 2011; Volpe-Martinicus et al., 2010), more recent evidence is mixed (Beghin et al., 2015). In particular, the critique on private standards has concentrated on its developmental implications, arguing that standards are not poor inclusive. Some empirical studies have suggest- ed that the inclusion of smallholders in high-standard trade is only possible with external support from devel- opment programmes, public-private partnerships or col- lective action. 6.2 New technologies and GVCs The increasing adoption of industrial automation, data exchange, advanced robotics and smart factories (the so called “new technologies”) can change the pro- duction processes considerably and reshape world pro- duction, thus also affecting international trade (Hall- ward, 2017). These new technologies are also promising in boosting productivity, reducing costs and supporting the speed of catch-up (Dollar, 2019). However, since typ- ically demand for automation arises for labour cost sav- ing reasons and it covers all those tasks that are repeti- tive and codified, emerging innovations can prove to be quite disruptive and lead to a reduction in the demand for workers (Rodrick, 2018; Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2020, Acemoglu et al., 2020). Consequently, the impact of these technologies on GVCs is twofold. On the one hand, automation represents an alternative to offshoring for those firms in developed countries looking to reduce their labour costs, thus raising the so-called process of “de-globalization” (Antràs, 2020b). However, the degree of substitution between automation and workers is low, especially in the more advanced firms deeply integrat- ed into GVCs. This is because of the demanding preci- sion and quality standards associated with these tech- nologies, which generate a disadvantage, especially for unskilled workers (Rodrik, 2018). On the other hand, new technologies can foster productivity and increase the demand for intermediate inputs. Artuc et al. (2018) show that automation in industrial countries boosted imports from developing countries and a growing lit- erature seems to confirm this trend (see Stapleton and Webb, 2020; and Wang, 2020). Digital technologies are also useful in enhancing GVC participation by reducing barriers at the entrance. Digital platforms allow the matching of buyers and sell- ers, fostering verification and monitoring in firm-to-firm relationships and thus lowering the initial fixed costs associated with GVC participation and information fric- tions (Antràs, 2020a). Furthermore, in these contexts in which language barriers are still prohibitive, the usage of artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning techniques could provide efficient translation services (Brynjolfsson et al., 2019). Those technological advancements and the associ- ated business and product innovations are also affect- ing structural and agricultural transformations across the globe (Christiaensen et al., 2021). They hugely reduce transaction costs, change economies of scale and modify the optimal inputs mix in agricultural production, pro- cessing and marketing. Since some agricultural tasks are highly automatable, automation could accelerate the exit of workers out of agriculture in developing coun- tries and transform farms and food processing firms in the industrialized world. Robots are beginning to be used in fields and packaging plants, together with tech- savvy agricultural workers, to integrate new technologi- cal solutions into specific goods and tasks. Solar-driven water pumps, cold storage and agro-processing equip- ment are also beginning to spread in developing coun- tries, accelerating the transition away from subsistence production (Banerjee et al., 2017; World Bank, 2020). Understanding the direction of innovations is par- ticularly important for developing countries and GVCs will play a key role in this process. Extending access to high-speed internet and expanding e-commerce has the potential to greatly facilitate increased GVC participa- tion by relatively small firms and also firms in coun- tries with bad logistical infrastructure (Antràs, 2020a). Since GVCs are a channel through which new technolo- 108 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. gies are transmitted between developed and developing countries, participation in GVCs could generate spillover effects in terms of learning (Dollar, 2019). Conversely, the reshoring of routine activities induced by technologi- cal progress could threaten unskilled workers in devel- oping countries. Since technological progress seems to be skill-biased, the impact of this could be non-trivial. Chang (2016) estimated that almost 80% of Cambodian, Vietnamese, and, to a lower extent, Indonesian workers could face possible replacement by automation. De Vries et al. (2016) highlighted that the biggest impact is on the higher value added and more skill-intensive activities. They found a lower demand for production workers by about 55 million workers in China, but no significant effects on demand for R&D jobs. Bertulfo et al. (2019), using regional input-output tables and a labour force survey for developing Asian economies, found that tech- nology within GVCs is associated with a decrease in employment levels across all sectors. Technological changes may have a deep impact even on income differentials. A vast strand of literature points out that participation in GVCs increases the skill premium, thus exacerbating wage inequality, especially in developing countries (Chaudhuri et al., 2010; Li et al., 2016; Shen and Zheng, 2020). Chongvilaivan and Thangavelu (2012) show that a 1% rise in GVC partici- pation leads to a rise in skill premium of approximately 2.5% in Thailand. Similarly, Mehta and Hasan (2012) found that GVC participation in services accounted for 30–66% of the increase in return to skills from 1993 to 2004 in India. Based on empirical evidence at manu- facturing firm-level data, Wang et al. (2021) argue that the rise of wage inequality in China mainly arises from moving to more upstream sectors rather than changing GVC participation. 6.3 COVID-19 and GVCs The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted global economies, with restrictions in the movement leading to large unemployment and GDP downturns across the world. It has also had a significant impact on interna- tional trade with a reduction in trade flows induced by government-mandated lockdowns (Baldwin and Free- man, 2020; WTO, 2020; Hayakawa and Mukunoki, 2021): the volume of world merchandise trade contract- ed by 5.3% in 2020 (a contraction smaller than initial- ly feared). Trade in nominal US dollar terms fell more sharply, 8%, while commercial services exports declined by 20% (source: WTO). Although the disruptions from COVID‐19 are ongo- ing, there is a growing body of research on the eco- nomic impacts of the pandemic. It is worth noting that these works are still in progress and those available are based on anecdotal evidence, estimates, or simulations based on incomplete and imperfect data. Consequently, their results cannot be considered conclusive and much will be learned from more detailed future studies on the topic. That said, a negative impact is what has emerged from initial evidence. The hot issue is to assess whether or not this nega- tive economic impact of the pandemic turns to be strict- ly related to the degree of participation of countries in global production networks (Eppinger, 2020). It is unde- niable that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected GVCs through several channels (Baldwin and Tomiura, 2020; Baldwin and Freeman, 2020; Miroudot, 2020; Antràs et al., 2020), and the production has been directly cut because of lockdown measures. On the supply side, the lack or scarcity of foreign suppliers due to disruptions in foreign production and transport networks determined a great bottleneck that has affected - and continues to affect - the entire value chain. On the demand side, demand for most products has fallen sharply because of the economic crisis, whereas shocks in consumer mar- kets have affected all foreign upstream suppliers. On the other hand, global demand for certain medical products has increased substantially, even resulting in tempo- rary shortages and export restrictions (for instance, the pandemic led to shortages of medical equipment and pharmaceutical products in many countries as demand spikes exceeded existing supply and production capac- ity), whereas other sectors and markets significantly expanded because of the pandemic. Sforza and Steininger (2020) show that the economic effects of the pandemic are heterogeneous across sectors, regions and countries. Di Nino and Veltri (2020) employ international input-output tables to evaluate the trans- mission via foreign trade of adverse shocks generated by lockdown and containment measures across the euro area. They highlight not only the presence of a large propagation effect in the euro area but also estimate that foreign demand weakness depressed the aggregate activ- ity of the euro area by about one fifth the size of the for- eign shock (a quarter of this effect is due to transmission of lower intermediate and final goods demand within the area). Exploring the vulnerability of developing countries to both demand and the supply shock of the pandemic occurring in major economic hubs, Pahl et al. (2021) find that the most integrated economies tend to suffer more through the GVCs. With specific regard to GVCs in the agriculture and food sectors, since the COVID-19 outbreak, agri-food supply chain disruptions have been widely observed 109 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food across the world (Christiaensen et al., 2021). The pan- demic has imposed shocks on all segments of this supply chain, simultaneously affecting farm production, food processing, transport and logistics, and final demand. In this respect, the non-pharmaceutical interventions imposed by local and/or national authorities to flatten the spread curve of the virus weakened the local food system, thus acting as a real threat to food security, especially for the most vulnerable households (Barrett, 2020; Béné, 2020). However, not all sectors and products have been equally affected and different products have experienced disruptions at different stages of the supply chain (OECD, 2020c). Furthermore, if agri-food supply chains in the developed world have demonstrated remarkable robust- ness and resilience in the face of COVID-19,11 in the developing world, the impacts on agri-food-supply chains are expected to be felt widely but unevenly. Farm opera- tions may be spared the worst, while small and medi- um-sized enterprises in urban areas will face significant problems (Reardon et al., 2020). In terms of actions, local governments have actively strengthened food safety nets and social protection mechanisms to maintain access to food. Specific government measures also addressed the impact of income reductions through subsidies, tax breaks and transfers to those affected. These measures have been indispensable but acted basically as coping strategies. The challenge is to stabilise global supply and consumption, heading the global food system towards a sustainable and resilient path. This revamps the impor- tant role of risk exposure and international trade in gen- eral, and GVCs’ participation in particular, as the key tools for fostering resilience among the poor, and reduc- ing their vulnerability to external shocks (Morton, 2020; Montalbano and Nenci, 2022). To sum up, some key features of GVCs that matter for efficiency also determine the exposure to shocks and the propagation of these shocks along the chain. A high reliance of sales on foreign demand and high depend- ence on foreign value-added inputs are associated with high-risk exposure, but not necessarily to higher vul- nerability since the latter is mainly related to how peo- ple actually manage risks (Montalbano, 2011). In this respect, the COVID-19 pandemic has led firms to a partial diversification of sources of supply whose extent will vary by sector depending on the costs of value chain reorganization. Moreover, according to some scholars, the world economy has already entered an era of de-glo- balization before the pandemic and the observed slow- down is the consequence of the remarkable and unsus- tainable period of hyperglobalization experienced in the 11 See The Economist, “The World’s Food System Has So Far Weathered The Challenge of COVID-19 – But things could still go awry”, 9 May 2020. two decades that preceded the 2008-2009 crisis (Antràs, 2020b). The Covid-19 crisis could have only fortified some of the trends noted above. However, its effects are ambiguous. 7. CONCLUSIONS AND THE FUTURE OF GVCs This work has analysed a wide range of aspects related to the study of GVCs, mainly using a “macro” lens and an empirical focus. We have first reiterated the economic centrality of GVCs, despite the slowdown recorded after the 2009 crisis and the further disrup- tions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. We have then reported the different approaches to the GVC anal- ysis and presented indicators for measuring and map- ping GVCs at micro and macro levels. Subsequently, we have shown some stylized facts focusing on GVC partici- pation and the position of the agriculture and food sec- tor, underlining a growing involvement on a global level, although with variation across regions and countries. After, we have summarized the main empirical evidence regarding the impact of value chains on the performance of the sectors under interest, highlighting an improve- ment in productivity and a supported economic growth. Finally, we have introduced and discussed some of the main critical issues affecting current and future GVCs, such as policy space, new technologies and the effect of Covid-19 pandemic. As illustrated in this work, we should acknowledge that with respect to GVC measurements and mapping, the literature is still scant. A growing empirical litera- ture emerged by taking advantage of the availability of global I-O matrices and aggregate trade data to map and measure GVCs, whereas sectoral, country coverage and firm-level data remain weak. Mainly, the relative lack of good quality microdata is underwhelming. Researchers struggle to envisage satisfactory proxies for both firms’ participation and positioning in the GVCs. Moreover, a lot more is currently left out because it is hard to inves- tigate it. Issues in point are, for instance, the channels of technology transmission in the GVCs; the pros and cons of specific, idiosyncratic investments, in the pres- ence of contractual incompleteness and low quality of institutions; the understanding of the different layers of GVCs and the availability of suppliers according to the tier they operate in.12 All that remains is to provide 12 Antràs (2021:16) advocates “a novel, [..] conceptualization of GVCs in which the focus is shifted away from the mere allocation of val- ue added across countries resulting from anonymous, spot exchanges of goods and services. Instead, a new paradigm emerges in which the identity of the specific agents participating in a GVC is crucial”. 110 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. more and more data to allow both a more robust under- standing of the GVC phenomenon and, consequently, the design of effective policy measures. The recent slowdown and retrenchment in the glob- al fragmentation of production have induced a growing body of authors to suggest that this trend is the prelude to a new era – the so-called “deglobalization”- whose speed of development may even be powered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Following this track, some trends could arise: first, reshoring, resulting in a shorter and less dispersed value chain characterized by a higher geo- graphical concentration of value added (Javorcik, 2020); second, diversification, with a broader distribution of tasks along the GVC, especially for intensive manufac- turing industries (Antràs, 2020); third, regionalization, as a consequence of the reduced length of the chains, dominated by three large regions: North America, Europe and a China-centric Asia (Baldwin and Freeman, 2020; Enderwick and Buckley, 2020; Wang and Sun, 2021). Several preliminary analyses seem to deny that reshoring and nationalization of production can improve resilience:   it would result in lower exposure to foreign shocks, but this comes at the cost of higher exposure to domestic shocks, i.e., value chains are still dependent on single suppliers, which does not protect against disrup- tion in production (Antràs, 2020; Bonadio et al., 2020; OECD, 2020b; Arriola et al., 2020; Espitia et al., 2021). Furthermore, such different kinds of risk exposure are not symmetric, being the foreign markets characterized, on average, by many players and a higher degree of com- petition. The demand for diversification, on the other hand, seems to find greater consensus: a larger network of diversified suppliers in multiple countries is the better response to avoiding the bottleneck (see Antràs, 2020; Bacchetta et al., 2021; Caselli et al., 2020; Miroudot, 2020). Lastly, the process of regionalization of the GVCs was indeed already in place with hubs in China, the US and Germany (Baldwin and Lopez-Gonzalez, 2015). A lt hough t he undeniable slowdown of recent years and several trends that will limit the expansion of GVCs in the near future, the complexity and high restructuring costs related to GVCs will probably pre- vent the large-scale dissolution of the existing GVCs (Bonadio et al., 2020; Simola, 2021). The key question then becomes how to consolidate GVCs in the future. In this context, policies can play a critical role. Brancati, Pietrobelli et al. (2021) collect from the field literature four types of policies to build more robust and resilient value chains: i) participation policies aimed at entering in and enhancing the local economy’s participation in GVCs. These are market-enabling policies that assist the private sector in restructuring productive activities according to a country’s latent comparative advantage and connectedness policies that reduce the costs related to linking domestic firms to foreign value chain part- ners (e.g. policies that reduce trade costs or information costs); ii) value capture policies intended for strength- ening the local economy’s value creation and capture within GVCs. Part of the GVC literature suggests sup- porting product and process upgrading, which implies moving vertically along the value chain to better prod- ucts or processes as well as the more challenging func- tional and interchain upgrading, entailing horizontal movement towards new functions or new markets (Ger- effi et al., 2005; Humphrey and Schmitz, 2002; Gereffi, 2019). Examples of these policies are: strengthening of local innovation and production ecosystems; building and improving specific types (logistical, digital, and productive) of infrastructures; development of specific skills; establishment of linkages between universities, vocational centers and firms involved in GVCs; pro- vision of advisory services in the areas of standards, metrology, testing, and certifications; iii) GVC inclu- siveness policies directed to improve the local social and environmental conditions in GVCs. They concern improvement of labor, social, and environmental regu- lations and their enforcement, at national and supra- national levels; responsible sourcing policies; private standard promotion; involvement of local communities in GVC governance; iv) and finally, resiliency policies designed for strengthening the local economy’s resilien- cy, that is how to ensure that a society’s ability to deliv- er essential goods and services is sufficiently resistant to both local and foreign disruptions. Among these kinds of policies, there are: supply chain and food system stress test; social protection, risk mitigating and risk coping policies; diversification policy; public procure- ment policy; international cooperation at a bilateral or regional level and to limit export restrictions. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This survey largely benefits from the research work that the Authors, individually or as a research group, have conducted in recent years on the topic of global value chains. The Authors are grateful to Antonio Biondi for extremely valuable research assistance. The study has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 861932. This publication reflects only the Author’s view and the Research Executive Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the infor- mation it contains. 111 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food REFERENCES Accetturo A., Giunta A., (2016) Global Value Chains and the Great Recession: Evidence from Italian and Ger- man Firms. Questioni di Economia e Finanza, n. 304, Banca d’Italia, Rome. Accetturo A., Giunta A., Rossi S., (2011) The Italian Firms between Crisis and the New Globalization. Occasional Paper, n. 86, Banca d’Italia, Rome. Acemoglu, D. and Restrepo, P., (2020) Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets. Journal of Political Economy, 128(6): 2188–2244. Acemoglu, D. and Restrepo, P., (2020) Unpacking Skill Bias: Automation and New Tasks. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 110: 356-61. Adao, R., Costinot, A., and Donaldson, D., (2017) Non- parametric Counterfactual Predictions in Neoclas- sical Models of International Trade. American Eco- nomic Review, 107(3): 633-689. Agostino, M., Brancati, E., Giunta, A., Scalera, D., Trivie- ri, F., (2020) Firm’s Efficiency and Global Value Chains: An Empirical Investigation on Italian Indus- try. The World Economy, 43(4): 1000-1033. Agostino M., Giunta A., Scalera D., Trivieri, F., (2016) Italian Firms in Global Value Chains: Updating our Knowledge. Rivista di Politica Economica, vol. VII- IX: 155-186. Agostino, M., Giunta A., Nugent J.B., Scalera D., Trivieri F., (2015) The Importance of Being a Capable Sup- plier. Italian Industrial Firms in Global Value Chains. International Small Business Journal, 33 (7): 708-30. Aguiar, A., Narayanan, B., and McDougall, R., (2016) An overview of the GTAP 9 data base. Journal of Global Economic Analysis, 1: 181-208. Ahmed, S., Appendino, M. & Ruta, M., (2017) Global Value Chains and the Exchange Rate Elasticity of Exports, B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, 17(1): 1-24. Alfaro, L., Antràs, P., Chor, D. and Conconi, P., (2019) Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 127(2): 509- 559. Altomonte, C., Di Mauro, F., Inferrera, S., (2020) EU Firms participation in GVC: Bliss or curse after COVID?. CompNet, policy brief No. 9. Altomonte, C., Di Mauro, F., Ottaviano, G., Rungi, A., Vicard, V. (2012) Global Value Chains during the Great Trade Collapse: A Bullwhip effect?. ECB Work- ing Paper No. 1412. Amador, J. and Cabral, S. (2009) Vertical specializa- tion across the world: a relative measure. The North American Journal of Economics and Finance 20: 267–280. Amador, J., and Cabral, S. (2016) Global value chains: A survey of drivers and measures.  Journal of Economic Surveys, 30(2): 278-301. Amin M., Islam A., (2014) Imports of Intermediate Inputs and Country Size. Policy Research Working Paper 6758, The World Bank Development Econom- ics Global Indicators Group. Amiti, M., and Konings, J., (2007) Trade Liberalization, Intermediate Inputs, and Productivity: Evidence from Indonesia. American Economic Review 97 (5): 1611– 38. Antimiani, A., Fusacchia, I. and Salvatici, L., (2018a) Val- ue Added Trade Restrictiveness Indexes. Measuring Protection within Global Value Chains. Departmen- tal Working Papers of Economics, University Roma Tre, 238. Antimiani, A., Fusacchia, I. and Salvatici, L., (2018b) GTAP- VA: An integrated tool for global value chain analysis. Journal of Global Economic Analysis, 3(2): 69–105. Antonioli, D., Montresor, S., (2021) Innovation persis- tence in times of crisis: an analysis of Italian firms. Small Bus Econ 56: 1739–1764. Antràs, P., (2020a) Conceptual Aspects of Global Value Chains. Policy Research Working Paper 9114. World Bank, Washington, DC. Antràs, P., (2020b) De-Globalisation? Global Value Chains in the Post-COVID-19 Age. NBER Working Paper No. 28115. Antràs, P. and Chor D., (2021) Global Value Chains, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 28549, Cambridge, MA. Antràs, P. and Chor, D., (2013) Organizing the Global Value Chain. Econometrica 81(6): 2127- 2204. Antràs, P. and D. Chor D., (2018) On the Measurement of Upstreamness and Downstreamness in Global Value Chains. In L. Y. Ing and M. Yu (Eds.), World Trade Evolution: Growth, Productivity and Employ- ment, Chapter 5: 126–194. Routledge. Antras, P., and Staiger, R. W., (2012) Offshoring and the Role of Trade Agreements. American Economic Review, 102 (7): 3140-3183. Antràs, P., Chor D., Fally T., Hillberry R. , (2012) Meas- uring the Upstreamness of Production and Trade Flows. American Economic Review Papers and Pro- ceedings 102(3): 412-416. Antràs, P., Redding, S. J. and Rossi‐Hansberg, E., (2020) Globalization and Pandemics. NBER Working Paper No. 27840. Arriola, C. et al., (2020) Efficiency and risks in global value chains in the context of COVID-19, OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 1637, OECD Publishing, Paris. 112 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. Artuc, E., Bastos, P., and Rijkers, B., (2018) Robots, Tasks, and Trade. Policy Research Working Paper 8674. World Bank, Washington, DC. Athukorala, P.C., (2005) Product fragmentation and trade patterns in East Asia. Asian Economic Papers 4: 1–27. Bacchetta, M., Bekkers, E., Piermartini, R., Rubinova, S., Stolzenburg, V., and Xu, A., (2021)  COVID-19 and global value chains: A discussion of argu- ments on value chain organization and the role of the WTO  (No. ERSD-2021-3). WTO Staff Working Paper. Baldone, S., Sdogati, F. and Tajoli, L., (2001) Patterns and determinants of international fragmentation of pro- duction: evidence from outward processing trade between the EU and Central Eastern European coun- tries. Review of World Economics 137: 80–104. Baldone, S., Sdogati, F. and Tajoli, L., (2007) On some effects of international fragmentation of produc- tion on comparative advantages, trade flows and the income of countries. The World Economy 30: 1726– 1769. Balduzzi, P., Brancati, E., Brianti, M. and Schiantarelli, F., (2020) The Economic Effects of COVID-19 and Credit Constraints: Evidence from Italian Firms’ Expectations and Plans. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13629. Baldwin, J., Yan, B., (2014), Global Value Chains and the Productivity of Canadian Manufacturing Firms. Eco- nomic Analysis Research Paper Series No. 90 Baldwin, R. and Freeman, R. (2020) Supply chain conta- gion waves: Thinking ahead on manufacturing con- tagion and reinfection’ from the COVID concussion, VoxEU.org. Baldwin, R. and Robert-Nicoud, F., (2014) Trade-in- goods and trade-in-tasks: An integrating framework. Journal of International Economics 92(1): 51–62. Baldwin, R. and Tomiura, E., (2020) Thinking ahead about the trade impact of covid-19. Chapter 5 in  Economics in the Time of COVID-19,  a VoxEU. org eBook CEPR Press. Baldwin, R., and Lopez-Gonzalez, J., (2015) Supply-chain Trade: A Portrait of Global Patterns and Several Test- able Hypotheses. The World Economy, 38(11): 1682- 1721. Balié, J., Del Prete, D., Magrini, E., Montalbano, P., and and Nenci, S., (2019) Does trade policy impact food and agriculture global value chain participation of sub-Saharan African countries?.  American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 101(3): 773-789. Banacloche, S., Ángeles Cadarso, M., Monsalve, F., (2020) Implications of measuring value added in exports with a regional input-output table. A case of study in South America. Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 52: 130-140. Banerjee, S., Kabir, M., Besnard, J., Nash, J., (2017) Dou- ble Dividend: Power and Agriculture Nexus in Sub- Saharan Africa. World Bank Report No. 114112. Barba Navaretti, G., Bugamelli, M., Schivardi, F., Alto- monte, C., Horgos, D., and Maggioni., D., (2011) The global operations of European firms. The second EFIGE policy report. Bruegel Blueprint 12. Barrett, C. B., (2020) Actions Now Curb Food Systems Fallout from COVID-19. Nature Food, 1(6), 319-320. Barrientos, S., Gereffi, G., and Rossi, A. (2011) Economic and social upgrading in global production networks: A new paradigm for a changing world.  International Labour Review, 150(3‐4): 319-340. Bas, M., and Strauss-Kahn, V., (2014) Does Importing More Inputs Raise Exports? Firm-Level Evidence from France. Review of World Economics, 150(2): 241–475. Bathelt H., Malmberg M., and Maskell P., (2004) Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation. Progress in human geography, 28(1):31-56. Beghin, J., Maertens, M. and Swinnen, J., (2015) Non-tar- iff measures and standards in trade and global value chains. Ann. Rev. Resource Econ. 7: 425–450. Békés, G., Halpern, L., Koren, M., and Muraközy, B. (2011) Still Standing: How European Firms Weath- ered the Crisis. The third EFIGE policy report, Blue- print 15, Bruegel. Béné, C., (2020) Resilience of local food systems and links to food security – A review of some impor- tant concepts in the context of COVID-19 and other shocks. Food Security 12: 805–822. Benz, S., M. Larch, and Zimmer, M. (2014) Trade in ideas: Outsourcing and knowledge spillovers. Ifo Working Paper Series 173, Ifo Institute for Economic Research. Bertulfo, D., Gentile, E., de Vries, G. J., (2019) The Employment Effects of Technological Innovation, Consumption, and Participation in Global Value Chains: Evidence from Developing Asia. ADB Eco- nomics Working Paper Series 572, Asian Develop- ment Bank. Blanchard, E. J., C. P. Bown, and Johnson, R. C., (2016) Global supply chains and trade policy. NBER Work- ing Paper 21883. Bloom, N., Sadun, R. and Van Reenen, J. (2012a) Ameri- cans do I.T. better. US multinationals and the pro- ductivity miracle. American Economic Review, 102(1): 167–201. 113 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food Bloom, N., Genakos, C., Sadun, R. and Van Reenen, J. (2012b) Management practices across firms and countries. Academy of Management Perspectives, 26(1): 12–33. Bonadio, B., Huo, Z., Levchenko, A., and Pandalai-Nayar, N., (2020) Global Supply Chains in a Pandemic. NBER Working Papers 27224, National Bureau of Economic Research. Borin, A. and Mancini, M., (2015) Follow the value added: bilateral gross export accounting. Economic Working Papers, No. 1026. Economic Research and International Relations Area. Bank of Italy. Borin, A. and Mancini, M., (2019) Measuring What Mat- ters in Global Value Chains and Value-Added Trade. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8804. Bown, C.P., Erbahar, A., and Zanardi, M., (2020) Global Value Chains and the Removal of Trade Protection. Working Paper Peterson Institute for International Economics, 20-3. Brancati E., Brancati, R., Maresca, A., (2017) Global Val- ue Chains, Innovation and Performance: Firm‐level Evidence from the Great Recession. Journal of Eco- nomic Geography, 17: 1039–1073. Brancati, E., Pietrobelli, C. and Torres Mazzi, C. (2021) The influence of value-chain governance on innova- tion performance: A study of Italian suppliers. United Nations University -MERIT Working Papers  2021- 017, https://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/work- ing-papers/abstract/?id=8755 Brynjolfsson, E., Xiang, H., and Liu, M., (2019) Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? Evi- dence from a Large Digital Platform. Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(12): 5449-5460. Cainelli, G. Ganau, R., Giunta, A., (2018) Spatial agglom- eration, Global Value Chains, and productivity. Micro-evidence from Italy and Spain. Economics Let- ters 169: 43-46. Caliendo, L., Parro, F., (2015) Estimates of the Trade and Welfare Effects of NAFTA. The Review of Economic Studies, 82(1): 1–44. Campa, J. and Goldberg, L. S., (1997) The evolving exter- nal orientation of manufacturing: a profile of four countries. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Eco- nomic Policy Review 3: 53–81. Caselli, F., Koren, M., Lisicky, M., and Tenreyro, S., (2020) Diversification through trade.  The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(1): 449-502. CEPAL, (2016) The South American input-output table: Key assumptions and methodological considerations. Documentos de Proyectos 722, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Car- ibe. Chang, J.H., (2016) Asean in Tranformation: the future of job at risk of automation. ILO, Bureau for Employers’ Activities, Working Paper No 9. Chaudhuri, S., Banerjee, D., (2010) FDI in agricultural land, welfare and unemployment in a developing economy. Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4): 229-239. Chen, H., Kondratowicz, M. and Yi, K.-M. (2005) Verti- cal specialization and three facts about US interna- tional trade. The North American Journal of Eco- nomics and Finance 16: 35–59. Chen, H.-Y. and Chang, Y.-M. (2006) Trade verticality and structural change in industries: the cases of Tai- wan and South Korea. Open Economies Review 17: 321–340. Chongvilaivan, A., Thangavelu, S.M., (2012) Does Out- sourcing Provision Lead to Wage Inequality? New Evidence from Thailand’s Establishment‐level Data, Review of International Economics, 20(2): 364-376. Christiaensen, L., Rutledge, Z., & Taylor, J. E., (2021) The future of work in agri-food. Food Policy, 99, 101963. Clark, D., (2006) Country and industry-level determi- nants of vertical specialization-based trade. Interna- tional Economic Journal 20: 211–225. Colen, L., Maertens, M. and Swinnen, J. (2012) Private Standards, Trade and Poverty: GlobalGAP and Hor- ticultural Employment in Senegal. The World Econo- my 35(8):1073–88. Constantinescu, C., Mattoo, A., and Ruta, M., (2019) Does vertical specialization increase productivity? The World Economy, 42: 2385–2402. Costinot, A., Rodríguez-Clareb , A., (2014) Trade Theo- ry with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization. Handbook of International Economics, 4: 197-261. Criscuolo, C. and Timmis, J., (2017) The Relationship Between Global Value Chains and Productivity. International Productivity Monitor, 32: 61–83. Daudin, G., Rifflart, C., Schweisguth, D., (2011) Who produces for whom in the world economy?. Cana- dian Journal of Economics, 44, (3): 1403-1437. Davis, D., Kaplinsky R., and Morris, M., (2018) Rents, Power and Governance in Global Value Chains”. Journal of World Systems Research. Davis, J. H. and Goldberg, (1957) A Concept of Agribusi- ness. Boston, USA: Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard Univer- sity. De Backer, K. and Miroudot, S., (2013) Mapping global value chains. OECD Trade Policy Papers, No. 159, OECD Publishing. De Marchi V., Di Maria E., Gereffi, G. (Eds.), 2018, Local 114 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. Clusters in Global Value Chains: Linking Actors and Territories, Routledge. de Oliveira, J. A. P., (Ed.) (2008)  Upgrading clusters and small enterprises in developing countries: Environ- mental, labor, innovation and social issues. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. De Vries, G., Chen, Q., Hasan, R., Li, Z., (2016) Skills and Activity Upgrading in Global Value Chains: Trends and Drivers for Asia. Asian Development Bank Eco- nomics Working Paper Series No. 496. De Vries, G., Chen, Q., Hasan, R., Li, Z., (2019) Do Asian Countries Upgrade in Global Value Chains? A Novel Approach and Empirical Evidence. Asian Economic Journal 33(1): 13-37. Del Prete D., Giovannetti G., Marvasi, E., (2017) Global Value Chain Participation and Productivity Gains for North African Firms. Review of the World Economy, 153: 675-701. Del Prete, D., Giovannetti, G., Marvasi, E., (2018) Global value chains: New evidence for North Africa. Inter- national Economics, 153: 42-54. Del Prete, D., Rungi, A., (2017) Organizing the global value chain: A firm-level test. Journal of International Economics, 109: 16-30. Dellink, R., Dervisholli, E. and Nenci, S., (2020) A quan- titative analysis of trends in agricultural and food global value chains (GVCs).  Background paper for The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets 2020. ISBN 978-92-5-133211-5, Rome, FAO. Di Nino, V., Veltri, B., (2020) The viral effects of foreign trade and supply networks in the euro area, Eco- nomic Bulletin Articles, European Central Bank, vol. 6. Diakantoni, A., Escaith, H., Roberts, M. and Verbeet, T., (2017) Accumulating Trade Costs and Competitive- ness in Global Value Chains. WTO Working Paper, Economic Research and Statistics Division, 02. Dollar, D., (2019) Technological innovation, supply chain trade, and workers in a globalized world.  Global Val- ue Chain Development Report, 1. Egger, H. and Egger, P., (2001) Cross-border sourcing and outward processing in EU manufacturing. The North American Journal of Economics and Finance 12: 243–256. Egger, H. and Egger, P., (2003) Outsourcing and skill-spe- cific employment in a small economy: Austria after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Oxford Economic Papers 55: 625–643. Egger, H. and Egger, P., (2005) The determinants of EU processing trade. The World Economy 28: 147–168. Elms, D.K., Low, P., (2013) Global Value Chains in a changing World. WTO Publication. Enderwick, P., and Buckley, P. J., (2020) Rising regionali- zation: will the post-COVID-19 world see a retreat from globalization?.  Transnational Corporations Journal, 27(2). Eppinger, P., Felbermayr, G. J., Krebs, O. and Kukharskyy, B., (2020) COVID-19 Shocking Global Value Chains. CESifo Working Paper No. 8572. Espitia, A., Mattoo, A., Rocha, N., Ruta, M. and Win- kler, D., (2021) Pandemic trade: COVID-19, Remote Work and Global Value Chains. Policy Research working paper no. WPS 9508, World Bank. Fagerberg, J., Lundvall, B., and Shrolec, M., (2018) Global value chains, national innovation systems and eco- nomic development. The European Journal of Devel- opment Research, 30(3): 533–556. Fajgelbaum, D., Khandelwal, K. A., (2016) Measuring the Unequal Gains from Trade. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(3): 1113-1180. Fally, T. (2012) Production Staging: Measurement and Facts, mimeo UC Berkeley. Fally, T. and Hillberry, R., (2015) A coasian model of international production chains. The World Bank. Feenstra, R.C., (2017) Statistics to Measure Offshoring and its Impact. NBER Working Paper, 23067. Feenstra, R.C. and Hanson, G.H., (1996) Globalization, outsourcing, and wage inequality. American Eco- nomic Review 86: 240–245. Feenstra, R.C. and Jensen, J.B., (2012) Evaluating esti- mates of materials offshoring from US manufactur- ing. Economics Letters 117: 170–173. Feenstra, R.C., Hanson, G.H. and Swenson, D.L., (2000) Offshore assembly from the United States: produc- tion characteristics of the 9802 program, In R. C. Feenstra (ed.). The Impact of International Trade on Wages (chapter 3, pp. 85–125). Chicago, IL: Univer- sity of Chicago Press. Fortunato, P., (2020) How COVID-19 is changing global val- ue chains, UNCTAD, September.  URL: https://unctad. org/news/how-covid-19-changing-global-valuechains. Foster-McGregor,N. and Stehrer, R., (2013) Value added content of trade: a comprehensive approach. Eco- nomics Letters 120: 354–357. Fracasso, A., and Vittucci Marzetti, G., (2015) Interna- tional trade and R&D spillovers. Journal of Interna- tional Economics, 96(1): 138-149. Fusacchia, I., Antimiani, A. and Salvatici, L., (2021) An assessment of import tariff costs for Italian exporting firms. Economia Politica, 38: 31-56. [10.1007/s40888- 020-00202-8]. Gaulier, G., Lemoine, F. and Unal Kesenci, D., (2007) China’s emergence and the reorganization of trade flows in Asia. China Economic Review 18: 209–243. 115 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food Gereffi, G. and Lee, J. (2009) A global value chain approach to food safety and quality standards glob- al health diplomacy for chronic disease prevention. Working Paper Series, February. Gereffi, G., and Lee, J. (2016) Economic and social upgrading in global value chains and industrial clus- ters: Why governance matters.  Journal of business ethics, 133(1): 25-38. Gereffi, G., Fernandez-Stark, K., (2011) The offshore ser- vices value chain: upgrading trajectories in develop- ing countries. International Journal of Technologi- cal Learning, Innovation and Development, vol. 4 (1/2/3): 206-234. Gereffi, G., Humphrey, J., and Sturgeon, T., (2005) The governance of global value chains. Review of Interna- tional Political Economy, 12(1), 78–104. https://doi. org/10.1080/09692290500049805 Gereffi, G., Ponte, S., and G. Raj-Reichert (2019) Hand- book on Global Value Chains. Edward Elgar Publish- ing. Giovannetti, G., Marvasi, E., (2016) Food exporters in Global Value Chains: Evidence from Italy. Food Pol- icy 59: 110–125. Giovannetti, G., Marvasi, E., Sanfilippo, M., (2015) Sup- ply Chains and the Internationalization of Small Firms. Small Business Economics, 44: 845–865. Giuliani, E., Pietrobelli, C., and Rabellotti, R., (2005) Upgrading in global value chains: Lessons from Latin American clusters. World Development, 33(4): 549– 573. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.01.002 Giunta, A., Montalbano, P., and Nenci, S., (2021) The Micro and the Macro of Global Value Chains: Evi- dence from selected European countries, mimeo. Goldberg, P.K. & Pavcnik, N., (2016) The Effects of Trade Policy. In Bagwell K. and Staiger R.W. (eds.) Hand- book of Commercial Policy, Vol. 1A: 161-206. Görg, H., (2000) Fragmentation and trade: US inward processing trade in the EU. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 127(3): 403–422. Greenville, J., Beaujeu, R. and Kawasaki, K., (2016) GVC participation in the agriculture and food sectors: draft report. OECD Trade and Agriculture Directo- rate Working Paper. Greenville, J., Kawasaki, K. and Beaujeu, R., (2017) A method for estimating global trade in value added within agriculture and food value chains. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers, 99, OECD Publishing, Paris. Greenville, J., Kawasaki, K., & Beaujeu, R., (2017) How policies shape global food and agriculture value chains. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers, No. 100, OECD Publishing, Paris. Grossman, G.M., and Rossi-Hansberg, E., (2008) Trading tasks: A simple theory of offshoring. American Eco- nomic Review, 98(5): 1978–97. Hallward-Driemeier, M., Nayyar, G., (2017) Trouble in the Making? : The Future of Manufacturing-Led Development. Washington, DC: World Bank. Halpern, L., Koren, M. and Szeidl, A., (2015) Imported inputs and productivity. American Economic Review, 105(12): 3660–3703. Hayakawa, K and H Mukunoki (2021) Impacts of COV- ID-19 on International Trade: Evidence from the First Shock. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 60: 101135.  Helg, R. and Tajoli, L., (2005) Patterns of international fragmentation of production and the relative demand for labor. The North American Journal of Economics and Finance 16: 233–254. Hijzen, A., (2005) A bird’s eye view of international out- sourcing: data, measurement and labour demand effects. Economie Internationale 104: 45–63. Hopkins, T. K. and Wallerstein, I., (1986) Commodity chains in the world-economy prior to 1800. Review 10(1): 157–170. Hummels, D., Ishii, J. and Yi, K.-M., (2001) The nature and growth of vertical specialization in world trade. Journal of International Economics 54: 75–96. Humphrey, J. and Memedovic, O., (2006) Global val- ue chains in the agrifood sector. UNIDO Working Papers. Humphrey, J. and Schmitz, H., (2002) How does inser- tion in global value chains affect upgrading industrial clusters?. Regional Studies, Vol. 36, No.9. Inferrera, S., (2021) Globalisation in Europe: Conse- quences for the business environment and future pat- terns in light of Covid-19. IWH-CompNet Discus- sion Papers, No. 2/2021 Javorcik, B., (2020) Global supply chains will not be the same in the post-COVID-19 world. In Baldwin RE, Evenett, S.J. (Eds.), COVID-19 and Trade Policy: Why Turning Inward Won’t Work, CEPR Press: 111– 116. Jiang, H., (2021) The role of panel data in organization of global value chain: evidence from a developing coun- try. Applied Economics Letters, 28 (7): 546-550. Johnson, R.C., (2014) Five Facts about Value-Added Exports and Implications for Macroeconomics and Trade Research. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(2): 119-142. Johnson, R.C., and Noguera, G., (2012) Accounting for intermediates: Production sharing and trade in value added. Journal of International Economics, 86(2): 224-236. 116 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. Kano, L., Tsang, E. W., and Yeung, H. W. C., (2020). Global value chains: A review of the multi-disci- plinary literature.  Journal of International Business Studies: 1-46. Kaplinsky, R., (2019) Rents and Inequality on Global Val- ue Chains. In S. Ponte, G. Gereffi, & G. Raj-Reichert (Eds.), Handbook on Global Value Chains (370–384). Edward Elgar Publishing. Kaplinsky, R., and Morris, M., (2016) Thinning and Thickening: Productive Sector Policies in The Era of Global Value Chains. European Journal of Develop- ment Research 28: 625–645. Karp, L. S., and Jeffrey, M. P., (1993) A dynamic model of oligopoly in the coffee export market. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 75: 448–457. Kasahara, H., and Rodrigue, J., (2008) Does the Use of Imported Intermediates Increase Productivity? Plant- Level Evidence. Journal of Development Economics 87(1): 106–18. Katz, J., and Pietrobelli, C., (2018) Natural resource-based growth, global value chains and domestic capabilities in the mining industry. Resources Policy, 58: 11-20. Kee, H. L., and Tang, H., (2016) Domestic Value Added in Exports: Theory and Firm Evidence from China. American Economic Review, 106 (6): 1402-36. Kimura, F., (2002) Subcontracting and the Performance of Small and Medium firms in Japan. Small Business Economics 18(1): 163–175. Knorringa, P., Pegler, L., (2006) Globalisation, firm upgrading and impacts on labour. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 97(5): 470-479. Koopman, R., Powers, W., Wang, Z., Wei, S.-J, (2010) Give Credit Where Credit is Due: Tracing Value Added in Global Production Chains. NBER Working Paper No. 16426. Koopman, R., Wang, Z., and Wei, S., (2012) Estimating domestic content in exports when processing trade is pervasive. Journal of Development Economics. Koopman, R., Wang, Z., and Wei S.-J., (2014) Tracing Value-Added and Double Counting in Gross Exports. American Economic Review 104 (2), 459–494. Kowalski, P., et al., (2015) “Participation of Developing Countries in Global Value Chains: Implications for Trade and Trade-Related Policies”. OECD Trade Pol- icy Papers, No. 179, OECD Publishing, Paris. Kummritz, V., (2016) Do Global Value Chains Cause Industrial Development?. Centre for Trade and Eco- nomic Integration, The Graduate Institute. Lauret, F., (1983) Sur les études de filières agroalimen- taire. Economie et Sociétés 17: 721–740. Lema, R., Pietrobelli, C., Rabellotti, R., and Vezzani, A., (2021) Deepening or delinking? Innovative capacity and global value chain participation in the IT indus- try. Industrial and Corporate Change. Lema, R., Pietrobelli, C., and Rabellotti, R., (2019) Inno- vation in global value chains. In S. Ponte, G. Gereffi, & G. Raj-Reichert (Eds.), Handbook on Global Value Chains (370–384). Edward Elgar Publishing. Lema, R., Rabellotti, R., and Gehl Sampath, P., (2018), Innovation Trajectories in Developing Countries: Co-evolution of Global Value Chains and Innova- tion Systems. The European Journal of Development Research, 30(3): 345–363. Lemoine, F. and Unal Kesenci, D., (2004) Assembly trade and technology transfer: the case of China. World Development 32: 829–850. Lenzen, M., K. Kanemoto, K., Moran, D., Geschke, A., (2012) Mapping the structure of the world economy. Environ. Sci. Technol., 46: 8374-8381. Lenzen, M., K. Kanemoto, K., Moran, D., Geschke, A., (2013) Building Eora: a global multi-region input– output database at high country and sector resolu- tion. Econ. Syst. Res., 25: 20-49. Li, S. A., Pan, S. Chi, S. (2016) North-south FDI and directed technological change. Economic Modelling, 59(8): 425-435. Liapis, P. and Tsigas, M., (2014) Trade in value added of agricultural and food products. Mimeo. Lopez-Garcia, P., Di Mauro, F., (2015) Assessing Europe- an Competitiveness: The New CompNet Microbased Database. ECB Working Paper No. 1764. Lopez Gonzalez, J., (2016) Using Foreign Factors to Enhance Domestic Export Performance: A Focus on Southeast Asia. OECD Trade Policy Papers, No. 191, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi. org/10.1787/5jlpq82v1jxw-en. Los, B., Timmer, M.P, and De Vries. G. J., (2015) How Global Are Global Value Chains? A New Approach to Measure International Fragmentation. Journal of Regional Science, 55(1): 66–92. Luck, P., (2019) Global supply chains, firm scope and vertical integration: Evidence from China, Journal of Economic Geography, 19 (1): 173-198. Ludema, R. D., Mayda, A., Yu, M., Yu, Z., (2019) The political economy of protection in GVCs: Evidence from Chinese micro data. CEPR Discussion Papers 14156. McCorriston, S. and Sheldon, I. M. (2011) Tariff (De-) escalation with successive oligopoly. Review of Devel- opment Economics 15: 587–600. McCullough, E., Pingali, P. and Stamoulis, K. (eds) (2008). The Transformation of Agri-Food Systems: Globalization, Supply Chains and Smallholder Farm- ers. London, UK: Earthscan. 117 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food Mehta, A. and Hasan, R. (2012) The effects of trade and services liberalization on wage inequality in India. International Review of Economics & Finance. Else- vier, 23(C): 75-90. Meliciani, V., Tchorek, G., (2019) Internationalization strategy, financial constraints and assets (in)tangi- bility. A study of euro area countries after the 2008 crisis. Journal of International Trade and Economic Development, 28(2): 161-188. Milberg, W., Winkler, D., (2010) Trade Crisis and Recov- ery : Restructuring of Global Value Chains. Policy Research working paper. no. WPS 5294. World Bank. Miller, R., E. and Temurshoev, U., (2017) Output Upstreamness and Input Downstreamness of Indus- tries/Countries in World Production. International Regional Science Review 40(5): 443-475. Minor, P., and Walmsley, T., (2017) Reversing NAFTA: A Supply Chain Perspective. Working Paper 007, ImpactEcon. https://impactecon.com/ wp-content/ uploads/2017/02/NAFTA-Festschrift-Paper-1.pdf. Miroudot, S. (2020) Resilience versus robustness in global value chains: Some policy implications. In Baldwin, R. E. and Evenett, S. J. (eds.), COVID-19 and Trade Policy: Why Turning Inward Won’t Work, Geneva: VoxEU & CEPR. Miroudot, S., and Cadestin, C., (2017) Services in Global Value Chains: From Inputs to Value-Creating Activi- ties. OECD Trade Policy Papers, No. 197, OECD Publishing Miroudot, S., Lanz, R., Ragoussis, A., (2009) Trade in Intermediate Goods and Services. OECD Trade Pol- icy Papers, No. 93, OECD Publishing, Paris. Montalbano, P., Nenci, S., Pietrobelli, C., (2018b) Opening and Linking up: Firms, GVCs and Productivity in Latin America. Small Business Economics, 50 (4): 917-935. Montalbano, P., (2011) Trade openness and developing countries’ vulnerability: concepts, misconceptions, and directions for research. World Development, 39(9): 1489-1502. Montalbano, P. and Nenci, S., (2020a) The effects of global value chain (GVC) participation on the eco- nomic growth of the agricultural and food sectors. Background paper for The State of Agricultural Com- modity Markets 2020. ISBN 978-92-5-133200-9, FAO, Rome. Montalbano, P. and Nenci, S., (2020b) Countries’ partici- pation in agri-food value chains: A global assessment and the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ag4Dev - Agriculture for Development, ISSN 1759- 0612, n.41, 2020. Montalbano, P. and Nenci, S., (2022) Does the participa- tion and positioning of Global Value Chains in the agriculture and food sectors affect economic perfor- mance? A global assessment, Food Policy, 108, 102235. Montalbano, P., Pietrelli, R., and Salvatici, L., (2018a) Par- ticipation in the market chain and food security: The case of the Ugandan maize farmers. Food Policy, 76: 81-98. Morrison, A., Pietrobelli, C., and Rabellotti, R., (2008) Global Value Chains and Technological Capa- bilities: A Framework to Study Learning and Innovation in Developing Countries. Oxford Development Studies, 36(1),39–58. https://doi. org/10.1080/13600810701848144 Morton, J., (2020) On the Susceptibility and Vulnerabil- ity of Agriculture Value Chains to COVID-19. World Development 136(2):105132. Mukherjee, D., (2018) Services traded for intermediate and final usage: An analysis of the role of services FTAs and restrictions, Journal of Economic Studies. Muradov, K., (2017) Trade Costs and Borders in Glob- al Value Chains. Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), 153: 487- 509. Nenci, S., (2020) Mapping global value chain (GVC) par- ticipation, positioning and vertical specialization in agriculture and food. Technical note for The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO), ISBN 978-92-5-133263-4, FAO, Rome. Ng, F. and Yeats, A.J., (1999) Production sharing in East Asia: who does what for whom, and why?. Policy Research Working Paper Series 2197. The World Bank. OECD, (2017) The Future of Global Value Chains: Busi- ness as Usual or “A New Normal”?. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 41. OECD, (2018) METRO Development: The ICIO-TIVA- Module. A Method to Analyse Global Value Chains with METRO. TAD/TC/CA/WP/RD(2018)1. OECD, (2020a) Coverage and representativeness of Orbis data. OECD Science, Technology and Industry Work- ing Papers 2020/06. OECD, (2020c) COVID-19 and Global Value Chains: Policy Options to Build More Resilient Production Networks. OECD, (2016) Evolving Agricultural Policies and Mar- kets: Implications for Multilateral Trade Reform. OECD Publishing, Paris. OECD, (2020b) Shocks, risks and global value chains: insights from the OECD METRO model. http://www. oecd.org/trade/documents/shocks-risks-gvc-insights- oecd-metro-model.pdf Olper, A., Curzi, D. and Raimondi, V., (2017) Imported intermediate inputs and firms’ productivity growth: Evidence from the food industry. Journal of Agricul- tural Economics. 68 (1): 280-300. 118 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. Otsuki, T., (2011) Effect of International Standards Cer- tification on Firm-Level Exports: An Application of the Control Function Approach. Osaka School of International Public Policy Discussion Paper No. 11E005 Owen, A., Wood, R., Barrett, J., Evans, A., (2016) Explaining value chain differences in MRIO databas- es through structural path decomposition. Economic Systems Research, 28(2): 243-272. Pahl, S., Brandi, C., Schwab, J., Stender, F., (2021) Cling Together, Swing Together: The Contagious Effects of COVID‐19 on Developing Countries Through Global Value Chains. The World Economy. DOI: 10.1111/ twec.13094. Piermartini, R. and Rubínová. S., (2014) Knowledge spillovers through international supply chains. WTO Working Papers 2014-11. World Trade Organization. Pietrobelli, C., Marin, A., Olivari, J., (2018) Innovation in mining value chains: New evidence from Latin America. Resources Policy, 58: 1-10, Pietrobelli, C., and Rabellotti, R., (2007) Upgrading to compete: SMEs, clusters and value chains in Latin America. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Pietrobelli, C., and Rabellotti, R., (2011) Global Value Chains Meet Innovation Systems: Are There Learn- ing Opportunities for Developing Countries? World Development, 39(7): 1261–1269. Ponte S., Gereffi G, Raj-Reichert G., (2019) Handbook on Global Value Chains, Edward Elgar Publishing, Chel- tenham Porter, M., (1990) The Competitive Advantage of Nations. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Rahman, J. and Zhao, T., (2013) Export Performance in Europe: What Do We Know from Supply Links? IMF Working Paper, No. 13/62. Raimondi, V., Piriu, A., Swinnen, J., and Olper, A., (2021) Global Value Chain and Trade Policy in the Agri food Sector, mimeo. Razzolini, T. and Vannoni, D., (2011) Export Premia and Subcontracting Discount: Passive Strategies and Per- formance in Domestic and Foreign Markets. World Economy 34(6): 984–1013. Reardon, T., and Swinnen, J., (2020) COVID-19 and resil- ience innovations in food supply chains, in: COV- ID-19 and global food security, chapter 30: 132-136, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Reardon, T., Bellemare, M. F., and Zilberman, D., (2020) How COVID-19 may disrupt food supply chains in developing countries. IFPRI book chapters, 78-80. Rodrik, D., (2018) New Technologies, Global Value Chains, and Developing Economies, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 25164. Rouzet, D., and Miroudot, S., (2013) The Cumulative Impact of Trade Barriers along the Value Chain: An Empirical Assessment using the OECD Inter-Coun- try Input-Output Model. Paper presented at the 16th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Shanghai, China. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN: Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). Ruta, M., (2017) Preferential trade agreements and global value chains: Theory, evidence, and open questions. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8190, Washington DC. Salvatici, L., (2020) Assessing the impact of trade and other policies on global value chain (GVC) participa- tion, positioning and vertical specialization in agri- culture and food. Background paper for The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO) 2020. Salvatici, L. and Nenci, S., (2017) New features, forgot- ten costs and counterfactual gains of the interna- tional trading system, (con L. Salvatici).  In European Review of Agricultural Economics, Volume 44, Issue 4, 1 September. Scoppola, M., (2007) Disciplining exporting state trading enterprises under economies of scale and oligopoly. European Review of Agricultural Economics 34(4): 429–459. Scoppola, M., (2021) Globalisation in agriculture and food: the role of multinational enterprises.  European Review of Agricultural Economics, 48(4), 741-784. Seker, M., (2011) Trade policies, investment climate and exporters, The World Bank. Sexton, R. J., (2012) Implications of Modern Agricultural Markets. Seattle, WA: AAEA. Sforza, A. and Steininger, M., (2020) Globalization in the Time of COVID-19. CESifo Working Paper No. 8184. Shen, C. and Zheng, J. (2020) Does global value chains participation really promote skill-biased technologi- cal change? Theory and evidence from China. Eco- nomic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 86(C). Simola, H., (2021) The impact of Covid-19 on global val- ue chains. BOFIT Policy Brief No. 2. Stadler, K., Wood, R., Bulavskaya, T., Södersten, C.-J. , Simas, M., Schmidt, S., (2018) EXIOBASE 3: devel- oping a time series of detailed environmentally extended multi-regional input-output tables. Journal Ind. Ecol., 22: 502-515. Stapleton, K. and Webb, M., (2020) Automation, Trade and Multinational Activity: Micro Evidence from Spain. Swenson, D.L. (2005) Overseas assembly and country sourcing choices. Journal of International Economics 66: 107–130. Swinnen, J. and Maertens, M. (2007) Globalization, pri- vatization, and vertical coordination in food value 119 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food chains in developing and transition countries. Agri- cultural Economics 37(2): 89–102. Tajoli, L., and Felice, G., (2018) Global Value Chains Par- ticipation and Knowledge Spillovers in Developed and Developing Countries: An Empirical Inves- tigation. The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan. European Associa- tion of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(3): 505-532. Timmer, M.P, Erumban, A.A., Los, B., Stehrer, R., and De Vries, G.J., (2014) Slicing Up Global Value Chains. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(2): 99-118. Timmer, M.P., Los, B., Stehrer, R. and de Vries, G.J., (2013) Fragmentation, incomes and jobs: an analysis of European competitiveness. Economic Policy 28: 613–661. Topalova, P. and Khandelwal, A., (2011) Trade Liber- alization and Firm Productivity: The Case of India. Review of Economics and Statistics 93(3): 995–1009. Trefler, D., Zhu, S.C., (2010) The structure of factor con- tent predictions. Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, 82(2): 195-207. Veugelers, R. , Barbiero, F., Blanga – Gubbay, M., (2013) Meeting the Manufacturing Firms Involved in GVCs, in Veugelers R. (ed.), Manufacturing Europe’s Future, Bruegel Blueprint Series, vol. XXI: 108-138 Volpe-Martincus, C., Castresana, S., and Castagnino, T. (2010) ISO Standards: A Certificate to Expand Exports? Firm-Level Evidence from Argentina. Review of International Economics, 18(5): 896-912. Walmsley, T., Hertel, T.W. and Hummels, D. (2014) Developing a GTAP-based Multi-region, Input–Out- put Framework for Supply Chain Analysis. In B. Fer- rarini and D. Hummels (Eds), Asia and Global Pro- duction Networks. Implications for Trade, Incomes and Economic Vulnerability: 16-80. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar and Asian Development Bank. Wang, J., (2020) Robot adoption, trade, and offshoring: A firm-level analysis. Mimeo Harvard University. Wang, Z., and Sun, Z., (2021) From globalization to regionalization: The United States, China, and the post-Covid-19 world economic order. Journal of Chi- nese Political Science, 26(1): 69-87. Wang, Z., Wei, S., Yu, X. and Zhu, K., (2017) Measures of Participation in Global Value Chains and Global Business Cycles, NBER Working Paper 23222. Wang, Z., Wei, S.J., Zhu, K., (2013) Quantifying Interna- tional Production Sharing at the Bilateral and Sector Levels. NBER Working Paper 19677. World Bank, (2015) Interwoven: How the Better Work Program Improves Job and Life Quality in the Apparel Sector, Washington, DC: The World Bank. World Bank, (2020) World Development Report: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains. World Bank Publications, Washington, DC. WTO, (2020) Trade set to plunge as COVID-19 pandem- ic upends global economy, Press/855Press Release. Xing, Y., (2012) Processing trade, exchange rates and China’s bilateral trade balances. Journal of Asian Eco- nomics 23: 540–547. Yeats, A.J., (1998) Just How Big is Global Production Sharing?. Policy Research Working Paper, 1871, World Bank, Washington, DC. Yi, K.-M., (2003) Can Vertical Specialization Explain the Growth of World Trade?. Journal of Political Econo- my, 111(1): 52-102. Yi, K-M., (2009) The Collapse of Global Trade: The Role of Vertical Specialisation. In The Collapse of Global Trade, Murky Protectionism, and the Crisis: Recom- mendations for the G20, Richard Baldwin and Simon Evenett, eds:45-48. Zhang, X. and Sun, J., (2007) An analysis of China’s glob- al industrial competitive strength based on vertical specialization. Frontiers of Economics in China 2: 57–73. APPENDIX 1A. Firm-level datasets Examples of firm level datasets include: the Comp- Net database that collects indicators computed by national data providers using firm-level data, covering variables referred to competitiveness, finance, labour, productivity and trade. It includes firms from 19 Euro- pean countries and 56 sectors, ranging from 1999 to 2017 (among papers using this dataset, see Inferrera, 2021; Lopez-Garcia and di Mauro, 2015; Altomonte et al., 2020). Similarly, the EFIGE database combines meas- ures of firms’ international activities (such as exports, outsourcing, FDI, imports) with quantitative and quali- tative information on about 150 items ranging from R&D and innovation, labour organization, financing and organizational activities, and pricing behaviour. Data consists of a representative sample of almost 15,000 sur- veyed firms (above ten employees) in seven European economies. Data were collected in 2010, covering the years from 2007 to 2009 (see, among others, Barba Nav- aretti et al., 2011; Accetturo and Giunta, 2011; Cainelli et al., 2018; Meliciani et al., 2019; Giunta et al., 2021). Additional works focusing on developing countries have used the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES). It provides detailed information on the characteristics of firms across several dimensions, including size, owner- 120 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Silvia Nenci et al. ship, trading status, and performances for over 135,000 firms belonging to the manufacturing and services sec- tors interviewed in 139 countries since 2005 under a common global methodology (see, among others, Mon- talbano et al., 2018b). Some works also took advantage of the Orbis database provided by the Bureau Van Dijk. It contains data for more than 100 countries covering more than 400 million private and public companies world- wide (with about 120 in Europe, 100 in North and South America, and 80 in Asia), and collecting data primarily from balance sheets (see, among others, Del Prete and Rungi, 2017). Although the huge set of information, the main disadvantage is that the firms included in Orbis represent only a fraction of the entire firm population and, most importantly, they do not form a representative sample (OECD, 2020a). Among commercial databases, we also find the Dun & Brandstreet’s WorldBase that provides comprehensive coverage of public and private companies and has been used in the empirical litera- ture (Alfaro et al., 2019). Finally, for the Italian case, it is worth mentioning the MET survey. It is carried out eve- ry two years. It collects information on a representative sample of around 25,000 Italian manufacturing firms. It also encompasses micro-sized companies (with less than 10 employees). Waves cover the years: 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019 (see, among others, Bran- cati et al., 2017; Agostino et al., 2020; Giovannetti et al., 2015; Giovannetti and Marvasi, 2016). 2A. Country and sectoral level datasets One of the most widely used country-sectoral data- sets is the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) which has been developed thanks to a consortium of 11 institu- tions led by researchers at the University of Groningen. It covers 43 countries (including OECD and emerging countries) and 56 industries from 2000-2014 (Release 2016). Moreover, it is based on official national account statistics and refers to end-use classification to allocate flows across partners and countries. As a result, it has been extensively used in the literature (see, among oth- ers, Baldwin and Lopez-Gonzales, 2015; Costinot and Rodrìguez-Clare, 2014; Timmer et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2013; Koopman et al., 2014; Johnson, 2014; Los et al., 2015; Adao et al., 2017; Fajgelbaum et al., 2016; Timmer et al., 2014). The ADB multi-region I-O database (ADB MRIO) has been developed by the Asian Development Bank and used in the literature (see De Vries et al., 2016; De Vries et al., 2019). It is basically an extension of the WIOD and includes five additional Asian economies – Bangladesh, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – for the years 2000 and 2007-2019. Importantly, the data pro- vided for these countries are derived from estimations produced by researchers and do not refer to official sta- tistics. Another important source of data is the OECD- WTO Trade in Value Added (TiVA) database. It embod- ies the national I-O tables from 2005 to 2018 for 45 industries and 64 countries, 27 of which are non-OECD member economies (most East and South-east Asian economies and a selection of South American countries). It provides useful indicators on value-added exports and other measures of the global supply chain used in the empirical studies (De Backer and Miroudot, 2013; Mir- oudot et al., 2017; Mukherjee, 2018). The data source presenting the broadest coverage in terms of countries is the Eora Global Supply Chain Database, constructed by a team of researchers at the University of Sydney (Lenzen et al, 2012; and Lenzen et Table 1A. Main datasets for research on GVCs at the firm level. E FI GE Br uegel w ith the suppor t of the E ur opean Commission Sur vey 2007-2009 15,000 fir ms Manufactur ing Bar ba Navar etti et al., ( 2011) ; Accettur o and Giunta, ( 2011) ; Cainelli et al., ( 2018) ; Meliciani et al. ( 2019) CompNet E ur opean Centr al Bank Account statistics, Business r egistr y, Sur veys, and Balance sheets 1999-2017 19 56 I nfer r er a, ( 2021) ; Lopez-Gar cia and di Maur o, ( 2015) ; Altomonte et al.( 2020) Dun & Br andstr eet’s W or ldBase Dun & Br adstr eet 190 Alfar o et al., ( 2019) Or bis Bur eau van Dijk Balance sheets 400 million fir ms Bloom et al. ( 2012a) , ( 2012b) ; Del P r ete et al., ( 2017) W or ld Bank E nter pr ise Sur vey W or ld Bank Sur vey 174,000 fir ms Sek er ( 2011) ; Amin et al. ( 2014) ME T Monitor aggio E conomia e T er r itor io ( ME T ) Sur vey 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 25,000 fir ms per year obser ved 38 Giovannetti et al. ( 2015) Balduzzi et al. ( 2020) ; Antonioli et al. ( 2021) Fi r m-l evel data ( us ed for GV C anal ys es ) Source: Authors’ elaboration. 121 Bio-based and Applied Economics 11(2): 93-121, 2022 | e-ISSN 2280-6172 | DOI: 10.36253/bae-12558 Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food al, 2013). This database provides a set of both national and global input-output tables, covering 189 countries and 26 sectors for complete time series from 1990 to 2015. Recently, UNCTAD and Eora developed a  time- series from 1990 to 2018  of some  key GVC indicators, including foreign value added, domestic value added and domestic value added embedded in other countries’ exports. Results from 1990 to 2015 are generated from Eora tables, whereas those for 2016-2018 are nowcasted using different data sources. The adopted methodology interpolates the missing points to provide broad, up-to- date coverage. Along with this, the GTAP is a comprehensive mul- ti-region database developed by the Purdue University which has been increasingly enriched in terms of data thanks to the contributions of individual researchers and organizations. It covers 121 countries plus 20 regions and 65 industries for 2004, 2007, 2011 and 2014. Thanks to its high coverage and relatively sectoral details, it has been intensely exploited by researchers (see, among oth- ers, Trefler and Zhu, 2010; Daudin et al., 2011; Johnson and Noguera, 2012; Koopman, Wang and Wei, 2014; Aguiar et al., 2016). Major regional initiatives - in addition to ADB MRIO – include: the EXIOBASE promoted by the EU- based consortium. This database extracts information from national supply-use and input-output tables extend- ed to environmental indicators. It covers 44 countries plus 5 rest-of-world regions and 163 industries for the period 1995 – 2015; the South-American Input-Output Table from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) covering 10 Latin America countries and 40 sectors for the years 2011 and 2014. Table 2A. Public Datasets for research on GVCs at the country and sectoral level. P r oj ect I ns ti tuti on D ata Sour ces Year s Countr i es I ndus tr i es R el ated P aper s W or dl I nput-Output Database ( W I OD) E U-based consor tium National Supply-Use tables 2000-2014 43 56 Baldw in and Lopez-Gonzales, ( 2015) ; Costinot and Rodr ìguez-Clar e, ( 2014) ; T immer et al., ( 2013) ; W ang et al., ( 2013) ; Koopman et al., ( 2014) ; Johnson, ( 2014) ; Los et al., ( 2015) ; Adao et al., ( 2017) ; Fajgelbaum et al., ( 2016) ; T immer et al., ( 2014) T r aded I n value Added ( T iVA) dataset OE CD National I -O tables 1995-2018 64 45 De Back er and Mir oudot, ( 2013) ; Mir oudot et al. ( 2017) ; Muck her jee, D. ( 2018) UNCT AD-E or a GVC Database UNCT AD/ E or a National Supply-Use and I -O tables fr om E ur ostat, OE CD, I DE - JE T RO 1990-2018 189 26 Lenzen et al., ( 2012) ; Lenzen et al., ( 2013) ; Del P r ete et al., ( 2018) ADB Multi-Region I nput-Output Database ( ADB MRI O) Asian Development Bank W I OD exstension 2000, 2007- 2019 63 35 De Vr ies et al., ( 2016) ; De Vr ies et al., ( 2019) Global T r ade Analysis P r oject ( GT AP ) P ur due Univer sity I ndividual r esear cher s/ instituti on 2004, 2007, 2011, 2014 141 65 T r efler and Zhu, ( 2010) ; Daudin et al., ( 2011) ; Johnson and Noguer a, ( 2012) ; Koopman, W ang and W ei, ( 2014) ; Aguiar et al., ( 2016) E XI OBASE 3 E U-based consor tium National Supply-Use tables 1995-2015 49 163 Stadler et al. ( 2018) ; Ow en et al. ( 2016) South Amer ican I nput-Output table E CLAP / I P E A National I -O tables 2011, 2014 10 40 CE P AL, ( 2016) ; Banacloche et al. ( 2020) Countr y and s ector al l evel Source: Authors’ elaboration. Volume 11, Issue 2 - 2022 Firenze University Press Agriculture, food and global value chains: issues, methods and challenges Margherita Scoppola Mapping global value chain participation and positioning in agriculture and food: stylised facts, empirical evidence and critical issues Silvia Nenci1, Ilaria Fusacchia1,2, Anna Giunta1,2, Pierluigi Montalbano3, Carlo Pietrobelli1,4 On the relationships among durum wheat yields and weather conditions: evidence from Apulia region, Southern Italy Marco Tappi*, Gianluca Nardone, Fabio Gaetano Santeramo A choice model-based analysis of diversification in organic and conventional farms Andrea Bonfiglio*, Carla Abitabile, Roberto Henke Financial performance of connected Agribusiness activities in Italian agriculture Gabriele Dono*, Rebecca Buttinelli, Raffaele Cortignani Pesticides, crop choices and changes in well-being Geremia Gios1,*, Stefano Farinelli2, Flavia Kheiraoui3, Fabrizio Martini4, Jacopo Gabriele Orlando5