Handbook on Accounting for Global Value Chains
Meeting of the Expert Group on international trade and economic globalization statistics
Jointly organized by ISTAT and UNSD
- Rome, Italy
- 7-9 May, 2018
Economic globalization has created new opportunities for businesses to organize their production chains more efficiently. This has increased the complexity of compiling economic statistics, as it is more difficult to break down production activities on a country-by-country basis. There is a need to understand the cross country benefits and risks by being able to “look through” the global firms in the global value chains (GVCs) and see their contributions in the production networks of resident enterprises in multiple countries. These emerging global production arrangements pose challenges to macroeconomic and business statistics, including the supporting business registers. The challenges include the choice of the statistical unit, the classification of the (global value chain satellite) accounts, the implementation of the principle of economic control and ownership, and the recording of domestic and cross-border transactions and positions in national accounts and balance of payments statistics.
In its decision 46/107, the Statistical Commission established the Expert Group on International Trade and Economic Globalization Statistics to address these measurement challenges. The main task of the Expert Group is to develop a handbook that will account for the measurement of GVCs, as described in various reports to the Commission on this topic in the past five years. Both the GVC perspective and the perspective of the national data compiler are fundamental to understanding the composition of the handbook. However, with the realization of the cross-country impact of GVCs on the economic structure of partner countries, a multi-country perspective for those national industries that are included in major GVCs is encouraged in the handbook.
The GVC approach builds on the integrated collection of business statistics from large global enterprises (across countries) for a select set of GVC-related economic activities, including trade in intermediate goods and services and foreign direct investments. In addition, inter-country supply and use tables, as well as inter-country input-output tables, can help to chart and understand relations at a macroeconomic level. To properly and correctly measure the cross-border statistics, some data-sharing with important economic partner countries may be necessary. The Commission also agreed with the development of a global enterprise group register to help national statisticians better understand business strategies and the relations between enterprises in various economies.
Monday, 7 May 2018 – Venue: ICE, Via Listz, 21, Roma DIRECTIONS
08:30
Registration and coffee
09:00
Welcome
Mr. Giorgio Alleva, President of ISTAT
Statement
Mr. Ivo Havinga, Assistant Director of UNSD
Opening Address
Mr. Michael Connolly, Chair of the UN Expert Group on International Trade and Economic Globalization Statistics
09:30
Keynote presentations
Global Value Chains and Development Policies
Carlo Pietrobelli, Professor of Economics, University Roma Tre and UNU-MERIT
Italian Firms in International Production Networks
Pasquale Lelio Iapadre, Professor of Economics, University of L’Aquila and UNU-CRIS
Detecting Value-Added in GVCs: Measurement Issues and Possible Solutions
Michele Mancini, Bank of Italy
Large Case Unit and the Measurement of MNE Engaged in GVCs
Simone Ambroselli, Head of Large Case Unit, Istat, Roma
11:15
Coffee Break
11:30
12:00
Open Discussion
12:30
Lunch
14:00
14:30
Discussants: Sanjiv Mahajan, UK ONS and Gerardo Durand, Mexico INEGI
15:00
Open Discussion
15:30
Tea Break
15:45
16:00
Discussants: Jose Manuel Rueda Cantuche, European Commission (including data framework and empirical challenges)
16:20
Open Discussion
17:00
Closing of Day 1
Tuesday, 8 May 2018 Venue: FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla (Visitors's Entrance on the Viale Aventino, Building A), Lebanon Room
09:00
Opening
Mr. Michael Connolly
9:05
PART II: GVC SUT AND INSTITUTIONAL SECTOR ACCOUNTS - CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF GVC ACCOUNTING
Presenter:
10:00
Discussants: Erich Strassner, US BEA (including KLEMS) and Nadim Ahmad, OECD (including Extended MC SUIOT)
10:45
Coffee Break
11:00
Open Discussion
12:30
Lunch
14:00
PART III: OVERVIEW OF GVC FRAMEWORK OF INTEGRATED BUSINESS STATISTICS
Presenter: Stefano Menghinello, ISTAT
14:30
Discussants: Lilian Andrea Guio Navas, DANE and Shri Sudipta Bhattacharya, India Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
15:00
Open Discussion
15:30
Tea Break
15:45
PART III: COUNTRY PRACTICES WITH GVC FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATED BUSINESS STATISTICS
Statistical Units - Business Lines and Business Functions; Large Case Units (LCU); National and Global GVC Business Register; Data Collection Framework for GVCs: Data Exchange with Partner Countries and International Agencies: Bilateral Asymmetries: Micro Data Linking
Presenter: Martin Luppes, Statistics Netherlands and Peter Bøegh Nielsen, Statistics Denmark
16:15
Discussants: Michael Connolly, CSO Ireland and Isabel Remond-Tiedrez, Eurostat
16:45
Open Discussion
17:15
Closing of Day 2
Wednesday, 9 May 2018 Venue: FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla (Visitors' Entrance on the Viale Aventino, Building A, Lebanon Room
09:00
Opening
Mr. Michael Connolly
9:05
9:25
Discussants:
10:00
Open Discussion
11:00
Coffee Break
11:15
Finalizing the Handbook – Time line
Steve Landefeld, UNSD consultant
11:45
Open Discussion
12:30
Lunch
14:00
User Centric Coordination Mechanisms for Economic Statistics
Presenter: Ivo Havinga, UNSD
Discussant: Andre Loranger, Statistics Canada
14:30
Tea Break
14:45
Reporting to the Statistical Commission
Presenter: Michael Connolly, Chair
16:30
Closing
Background
On 12 April 2010, Pascal Lamy (at that time the Director General of the World Trade Organization, WTO) delivered a speech at the Paris School of Economics in which he debunked some economic myths, among others Fallacy #2: "It is unhealthy for trade to grow faster and faster compared to output". Under this point he addresses the main problems of trade statistics due to the fragmentation of the production process. The speech can be found here.
The following year, UNSD organized a larger statistical event together with colleagues of Eurostat and WTO at the WTO premises in Geneva with the theme of "Measuring global trade: Do we have the right numbers?" (and see here).
This event contained already all the measurement issues, which are still on the table, such as presentations by Prof. Gary Gereffi of Duke university and by Tim Sturgeon of MIT on Measuring Global Value Chains, the international sourcing of Business Functions (Peter Nielsen, Statistics Denmark), the impact of globalisation on National Accounts (Tihomira Dimova, UNECE), Multi-National Enterprises and Foreign Affiliates, an integrated approach of trade in goods and services and business statistics (Stefano Menghinello, ISTAT), and Trade in Value-Added (Andreas Maurer, WTO).
In subsequent years this topic was introduced into the official work programme of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) with reports to the Commission from 2013 onwards. In 2013, the Commission agreed to the creation of a “friends of the chair” group tasked with preparing a concept paper on the scope and content of the framework. In 2015, this group delivered its final report in which it recommended the drafting of a handbook on the measurement of international trade and economic globalization, which would cover the measurement issues of global enterprise groups, firm heterogeneity for global value chain purposes, the classification for business functions, micro-data linking, bilateral trade and investment asymmetries, and (iv) multi-country supply and use tables.
The UN expert group started its work in 2015 and met twice in New York, namely in January and November of 2016. The Seminar in Luxembourg is the third meeting of the members of this group. Links to the reports of the various meetings are provided below.
- 2013 UNSC report
- 2014 UNSC report
- 2015 UNSC report
- 2016 UNSC report
- 2017 UNSC report
- 2018 UNSC report
Previous meetings
- International Conference on Measurement of Trade and Economic Globalization, organized by UNSD and INEGI in cooperation with OECD, WTO and Eurostat, Aguascalientes, Mexico, 29 Sep - 1 Oct 2014
- First Meeting of the Expert Group on International Trade and Economic Globalization Statistics, New York, USA, 26-28 January 2016
- Report of the first meeting
- Second Meeting of the Expert Group on International Trade and Economic Globalization Statistics, New York, USA, 29 Nov - 1 Dec 2016
- Third Meeting of the Expert Group on International Trade and Economic Globalization Statistics, Luxembourg, 6-8 June 2017
Documents
- Agenda
- Concept Note
- GVC handbook_Part I - Introduction
- GVC handbook_Part II - Conceptual Framework of GVC Accounting
- GVC handbook_Part III - Framework for integrated business statistics
- GVC handbook_Part IV - GVC Analysis and Policy Framework
- GVC handbook_Part V - Annexes
- Note on Coordination Mechanism
- Summary Report: Rome Meeting of the Expert Group on ITEGS
Attendee Info
Links
For Expert Group members only
