Singapore in the global value chains

• Main Authors: CHANG, Pao-Li, NGUYEN, Tran Bao Phuong
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: Gross export decomposition; global value chain participation; position in the global value chain; upstream/downstream trade partners; Asian Studies; International Economics
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2340; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/3339/viewcontent/SGVC.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In this chapter, we analyze the participation of Singapore in the global value chains (GVC): how much of its gross exports are GVC-related trade, how downstream it is, and which countries are its key upstream and downstream trade partners. This is done at both the country aggregate and at the sector level. New formulas are proposed in the gross export decomposition framework of Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) and Borin and Mancini (2017), to characterize a country/industry’s downstreamness in the GVC and the importance of each trade partner in its backward/forward linkages. Singapore is found to start off with a very high level of GVC trade in 1995, but its unique status became diluted over the years. East Asian countries (such as Taiwan and Korea) had become equally, if not more, active players in the GVCs in the last two decades. In contrast with Japan and the US, Singapore was overall located at the lower end of the GVC (with similar downstreamness index as China). Malaysia and the US used to be the top two upstream/downstream partners of Singapore in 1995, but by 2011, China had taken up substantially more weight and replaced the US’s status.