Global production networks, competition, regulation and poverty reduction: policy implications.

Abstract

This paper is based on research on the relation of global production networks (GPNs) to economic development and poverty reduction. As part of this remit it has regard to the significance of issues of competition, and competition and regulation policy. Though informed directly by CRC-sponsored research on the electronics and wine industries of Malaysia and South Africa respectively, it draws on a significant body of theory and research on the consequences of economic globalisation (generally conceptualised in terms of 'global value chains') for industrial transformation and inequality in the developing and developed worlds alike. The next section sketches the principal elements of the GPN framework and indicates its methodological advantages over earlier approaches to industrialisation, economic development and poverty reduction. In so doing it identifies the ways in which competition, competition policy and regulatory regimes might impact (positively or negatively) on the developmental outcomes of GPNs. The subsequent section briefly indicates the results of the research on Malaysia and South Africa conducted thus far and the final section draws out their policy implications at various levels of institutional and spatial abstraction.

Citation

Manchester, UK, CRC Working Paper, No. 115, 21 pp.

Global production networks, competition, regulation and poverty reduction: policy implications.

Published 1 January 2005