UNIDO-IfW-KCG Joint Article about Risk, Resilience and Recalibration in Global Value Chains

Current global value chains (GVCs) are highly efficient, specialized and interconnected, but they are also highly vulnerable to global risks. The high vulnerability to global risks was made clear particularly through the COVID-19 pandemic that caused supply-side disruptions in the first quarter of 2020, as China and other Asian economies were hit by the outbreak of the virus which later spread globally, leading to business closures around the world.

Against this background, KCG researchers Dr. Adnan Seric (United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) & KCG), Prof. Holger Görg Ph.D. (Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) & KCG) and Dr. Wan-Hsin Liu (IfW & KCG), in cooperation with Michael Windisch (UNIDO), discuss in a recent policy article “Risk, Resilience and Recalibration in Global Value Chains” the risks facing GVCs, their challenges to be resilient amid the pandemic and their future recalibration need. The authors also emphasize that globalization is now at the crossroads and China’s post-COVID-19 recovery may hold some clues to the future development of GVCs. They argue that even though the roll-out of effective vaccines in late 2020 and early 2021 may loosen the grip of COVID-19 on the world economy, ongoing protectionist and geopolitical trends suggest that the world is unlikely to see a return to business as usual. The article was published at the UNIDO Industrial Analytics Platform recently.

The article “Seric, A., Görg, H., Liu, W.-H., and Windisch, M. (2020), Risk, Resilience and Recalibration in Global Value Chains, UNIDO Industrial Analytics Platform Dec. 20, 2020” is available here. The article is also available as a VOXeu blog article. A short and slightly revised version of the paper is also available as a blog article published at the OECD platform “Development Matters”. It was also a background paper for the 2020 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization that was held on December 15, 2020.