Globalization and Trade Flows: What You See is Not What You Get!

Abstract

The collapse that followed the recent financial crisis has led to a renewed interest on the measurement issues affecting international merchandise statistics in the new globalized economy. The international fragmentation of industrial production blurs the concept of country of origin and calls for the production of new statistics on the domestic content of exports, with a view of estimating in value added. Alongside, the international statistical community has revised in 2010 the concepts and definitions on both, international merchandise and in services statistics. This paper discusses the various issues related to the concepts of goods for processing and intra firm trade in statistics, and provides an overview of the method of analysing the impact of the fragmentation of production in international value chains.