Japan’s participation in global value chains: splitting the IO table into production for export and domestic sale

Abstract

This paper examines Japan’s participation in global value chains (GVCs). To this end, we use plant-level data for Japan to split output in each industry in Japan’s manufacturing sector into output for export or domestic sale and create an extended multi-country input–output table (MIOT). We then compute trade in value added (TiVA) indicators to examine the participation of Japanese manufacturing plants in GVCs. Our estimates suggest that Japan’s forward participation in GVCs is lower than suggested by estimates computed from a traditional MIOT. We infer that this result is due to high cross-border production fragmentation as well as the large presence of Japanese multinational companies in global manufacturing and the high volume of intra-firm trade in Japan’s manufacturing sector. We conclude that considering firm heterogeneity in production for export and domestic sale in MIOTs provides a more accurate understanding of global production fragmentation.