Artificial intelligence, global value chain position and manufacturing firm emissions

Multinational enterprises link domestic value chains and global value chains（GVCs）, so understanding their activities is fundamental to understanding GVCs. However, few studies focus on Chinese foreign-owned enterprises’ position in GVCs. In this paper, China’s industry data are divided into domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises, and production, trade and investment are integrated into a unified framework of GVCs. Based on the global input-output model considering heterogeneity between domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises, this paper constructs forward and backward production length index, analyzes Chinese domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises’ position and evolution path in GVCs from the perspectives of production and consumption. The results show that: Domestic-owned enterprises are in a more upstream position in GVCs than foreign-owned enterprises. Domestic-owned enterprises have a more complete production chain in China, which makes a greater contribution to domestic production and consumption. Foreign-owned enterprises have a significant proportion of the GVC production chain, with obvious export-oriented characteristics. The decomposition of forward and backward production chains show that the GVC production chain is the longest, and the traditional trade production chain is longer than the pure domestic production chain for both domestic-owned and foreign-owned enterprises. Both of them have the characteristics of “dual production structure”, i.e. the GVC production chain is more complex, and export production is more complicated than pure domestic production. From the perspective of industries, most industrial production chains of domestic-owned enterprises are longer than that of foreign-owned enterprises, and the production chain of manufacturing industry is longer than that of service industry. The pure and traditional trade production length of foreign-owned enterprises are almost equal to 1, while the pure and traditional trade production length of domestic-owned enterprises are larger than 2, which indicates that foreign-owned enterprises play a small role in domestic production, and the upgrading of domestic industrial structure mainly depends on the production and consumption of domestic-owned enterprises. From the perspective of evolution path, most domestic-owned enterprises evolve along path 1 in GVCs, with longer production length and closer industrial links, while most foreign-owned enterprises evolve along path 2 and path 4 in GVCs, indicating that they are outflowing from China. Therefore, domestic-owned enterprises should further strengthen the separation of functions and spaces, and be more actively embedded in GVCs; China should care about the manufacturing industry which could drive and promote its upstream and downstream industries, and not abandon the processing manufacturing industry and turn to the high-tech or modern service industry blindly; it should also maintain the consistency of trade and industrial policies, and guide foreign investment in China in a rational way.

In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), cultural industries have introduced new development opportunities, and their global value chain (GVC) position is receiving more attention. This study uses panel data from global cross-borders from 56 countries (regions) as the research sample to empirically analyze the impact of AI on improving the GVC position of cultural industries using the double fixed effects regression model and examines the heterogeneity effect. The results confirm that there is a significant positive correlation between AI and the GVC position of cultural industries. The mechanism test shows that AI impacts the division of labor position in the GVC of cultural industries mainly through technological innovation and the industrial structure. Heterogeneity analysis shows that AI has a significant effect on promoting the cultural industry's GVC position in high-income countries (regions) but it has no significant effect on low- and middle-income countries (regions). The results of this study can provide a useful reference for improving the division of labor positions in the GVC and better promoting the development of cultural industries.

Focusing on technology spillover’s bridge effect between bidirectional Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Global Value Chain (GVC) position of manufacturing industry, this paper first analyzes theoretical mechanism of bidirectional FDI’s influence on GVC position, by taking into account technology spillover perspective, and then it verifies the theoretical framework by using 15 Chinese manufacturing sub-industries data in the latest ten years. The Generalized Least Squares regression results prove that technology spillover plays as a core channel of both Inward FDI’s and Outward FDI’s GVC position promotion effect, and the interactive development of bidirectional FDI can further significantly enhance this bridge effect.

This paper uses combined data from Chinese Customs Trade Data, Chinese Industrial Enterprise Data, and the World Input-Output Tables to empirically study the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), financing constraints, and firms’ global value chain (GVC) position. The results show that FDI significantly promotes firms’ ascension in the GVC, while financing constraints not only inhibit firms’ ascension in the GVC but also weaken the promoting effect of FDI. However, these conclusions exhibit significant heterogeneity due to differences in firm ownership, trade methods, main export destinations, firm productivity, and regional location. Additionally, compared to FDI from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions of China, FDI from OECD countries has a stronger effect on firms’ ascension in the GVC. Moreover, financing constraints weaken the promoting effect of FDI from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, but enhance the effect of FDI from OECD countries.

This article utilizes a novel approach by combining the export domestic value-added rate and export technology complexity to gain insights into a country’s comprehensive global value chain (GVC) position. Additionally, we incorporate psychological theories, specifically fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence, to elucidate the impact of population aging on a country’s GVC position. The empirical results reveal that population aging has a positive and statistically significant effect on the comprehensive indicators of a country’s GVC position and export technology complexity. However, it exerts a negative and statistically significant influence on the export domestic value-added rates. These findings hold robustly across various tests conducted. Notably, we find that the influence of population aging on different GVC position indicators varies depending on the income level, degree of aging, and rate of aging acceleration.

Global value chains and domestic innovation

Given the vital importance of global value chains (GVCs) position for a country's international competitiveness, this paper tries to investigate the impacts of environmental regulation on the GVCs position of China's industrial sector. Using the latest value-added decomposition method, we first measure the GVCs position of China's industrial sector from 2003 to 2014. Subsequently, both two-stage least squares (2SLS) method with panel data and mediating effect model are employed to empirically examine the effects of environmental regulation on China's position in GVCs. The results indicate that environmental regulation has significantly upgraded the GVCs position of China's industrial sector, and the effect is more evident for the sub-sectors with originally lower GVCs position. The mediation effect test shows that increasing R&D investment is an important channel through which environmental regulation affects the GVCs position of China's industrial sector, which verifies the existence of the Porter hypothesis. Further analysis finds that the enhancement of GVCs position of China's industrial sector caused by environmental regulation is mainly achieved through reducing the backward GVCs position.

Using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study analyzes its impact on the global value chain (GVC) position of producer service sectors across 46 countries from 2007 to 2021. The results show that the BRI reduces institutional distance with China and eases business regulatory constraints, significantly enhancing the GVC position of various producer services industries across different countries. However, geopolitical risks hinder this effect, whereas signing regional trade agreements amplify it. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the BRI’s effects on GVC position enhancement are greater for countries with bilateral investment agreements with China and higher economic development levels.

Against the backdrop of current global collaboration on mitigating carbon emissions, how to reduce the energy uses in the Belt and Road Initiative area becomes an urgent and big challenge facing the global community. Using the Eora input-output database, this paper accounts the embodied energy trade between Belt and Road countries in 2015, followed by an investigation of the factors influencing the embodied energy trade through a panel gravity model. Global value chain participation and position are two newly considered factors in analyzing the determinants of embodied energy flow. We find that the main bilateral embodied flow paths are from South Korea to China, China to South Korea, Singapore to China, Ukraine to Russia, and Malaysia to Singapore. Five percent embodied energy flow paths account for 80% of the total bilateral embodied energy flow volume between Belt and Road countries. The gravity model results indicate that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, population, global value chain participation are the key drivers of bilateral embodied energy trade, while the industrial share of GDP and global value chain position are negatively related to the trade. Energy intensity plays a crucial role in reducing the bilateral embodied energy flow. These results are useful in the policymaking of sustainable development for the Belt and Road Initiative.

Figuring out how government innovation incentive policies affect the GVC (global value chain) position at a micro level is essential for choosing anaccurate policy to encourage self-dependent innovation. We examined whether and how China’s preferential tax policies enhance the GVC position of firms via firm-level data using the method of difference in differences (DID), taking the tax reduction and exemption policy of high-technology enterprises as an example. In addition, the firm heterogeneity of different factor intensities and regions was also examined. The empirical results show that, firstly, the tax reduction and exemption policy of high-technology enterprises has a significant positive impact on the firm GVC position. Secondly, this positive effect is more prominent in labor-intensive firms, capital-intensity firms and eastern enterprises. Thirdly, analysis of the mechanism indicated that the tax reduction and exemption policy of high-technology enterprises improves the firm GVC position by stimulating growth in production efficiency.

The global value chain (GVC) position is an effective metric for assessing a country's ability to benefit from global production. Grounded in the trade-in-tasks theory and supplemented by the perspective of domestic value-added in production and international technology diffusion, this study explores the impact of relative technological progress on GVC position across 24 OECD countries and 16 industries (2007–2021), with digitalisation as a moderator and threshold variable. The findings reveal that relative technological progress significantly enhances GVC position, with effects varying by regional digitalisation. This study employs innovation dependence as a proxy for relative technological progress, broadening traditional measures of technological capabilities by integrating productivity and innovation investments. This validates the trade-in-tasks theory, demonstrating that countries select international production tasks aligned with comparative advantages.

Impact of financial development on the position in global value chain: An analysis from the perspective of R&D intensity

The effects of participation in global value chains on energy intensity: Evidence from international industry-level decomposition

Present-day supply-side structural reform in China places an abundance of emphasis on environmental protection. In this paper, we re-measure the upstreamness of Chinese enterprises in global value chains as described by Ni Hongfu (2022). Subsequently, the impact of environmental regulations on the global value chain position of Chinese firms is studied in depth, using the cleaner production standards promulgated and implemented by the Chinese government in 2003 as a quasi-natural experiment, taking a time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) approach. The data sources employed include the Cleaner Production Standard Implementation Industry Directory, the World Input–Output Database (WIOD), the China Industrial Enterprise Database, and the China Customs Import and Export Database. This research discovered the following: First, adopting cleaner production standards significantly improves Chinese enterprises’ positions in the global value chain—a conclusion that holds up to a number of robustness tests. Second, in terms of firm size, capital intensity, ownership characteristics, and government subsidies, there exists a noticeable heterogeneity in the promotion of the adoption of cleaner production standards for the improvement of Chinese enterprises’ global value chain position. Third, the implementation of cleaner production standards stimulates the upgrading of Chinese enterprises’ global value chain position, primarily through the entry and exit impacts, product-switching effect, and innovation compensation effect. The following proposals for policy can be implemented in light of the findings of this paper: “upstream prevention” strategies in the development of future environmental protection and trade policies should be advocated; nuanced and stratified environmental policies should be meticulously constructed; a mix of policies should be employed to bolster the institutional support for green environmental regulations; the integration of environmental governance into the evaluation framework should be emphasized; the creation of an innovation-oriented environmental governance system should be expedited. In conclusion, the findings of this research provide empirical evidence on the role of environmental regulations in coordinating ecological development and strengthening the position of Chinese enterprises in global value chains, which may assist other developing nations in making the transition to a path of high-quality growth.

The development of agricultural global value chains (AGVCs) has led to the rapid development of intermediate goods trade, agricultural products need to cross between several countries, so that more different technical standards such as SPS (Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures) / TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) between countries have been imposed by countries around the world with regard to the quality and safety of agricultural products, which lead the burden of trade costs increase prominent. This paper examines whether the extent to which SPS/TBT measures differ between countries in the agricultural sector affects their position in global value chains, based on the bilateral trade value added data in the OECD inter-country input-output database, combing the social network analysis and UNCTAD database from 2010 to 2018, measure the positions of countries in the agricultural global value chains and the standard differences of SPS/TBT among countries. We use the gravity model to empirically inspect the impact of the SPS/TBT standards heterogeneity between countries (regions) on the AGVCs position. We find: (1) structural differences in SPS/TBT standards among countries negatively affect the centrality of GVCs; (2) the negative impact of standards difference on the total and forward centrality is more serious than backward centrality; (3) The negative impact of the SPS/TBT difference is more pronounced in developing countries.