firms' efficiency and global value chains: an empirical ... brancati.pdf · gvc participation...

Firms’ Efficiency and Global Value Chains: AnEmpirical Investigation on the Italian Industry

M. Agostino, E. Brancati, A. Giunta,F. Trivieri, and D. Scalera

Sapienza University of Rome

21/10/19 LUISS

E. Brancati (Sapienza) Firms’ efficiency and GVCs 21/10/19 LUISS 1 / 15

Research Question

Effect of GVC participation on firms’ efficiency:

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure technical efficiency.

Newly available Italian survey (MET) to design a taxonomy of GVCinvolvement.

Emphasize heterogeneities across GVC participation modes and com-panies’ position along the chain.


Related Literature

Vertical specialization and fragmentation of the production processes:Findlay (1978), Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2006), Markusen andVenables (2007), Antras and Chor (2013), among others.

Many studies focused on macroeconomic consequences of upsurgeof GVCs and policy issues (Koopman et al., 2011; De Backer andMiroudot, 2014, among others).

Opportunity for local producers to learn from global leaders alongthe chain, particularly beneficial for SMEs.

Neither all transactions are alike, nor benefits equally shared: cen-trality of governance. Gereffi et al. (2005) classify governance basedon:

complexity of transaction;degree of codifiability;capability of the firms.


Related Literature and Contributions 2

Relationship GVCs-performance often investigated through produc-tivity indicators (Agostino et al., 2015; Del Prete et al. 2017, Gio-vannetti et al., 2015; Veugelers et al., 2013).

We focus on pure technical efficiency (firm ability to locate closer tothe efficiency frontier): exclude sources due to technological progressand changes in scale.

Propose a novel approach to identify GVCs and their participationmodes (complex phenomena require complex proxies).

Counterfactual analysis (PSM) and truncated regression models toestimate the impact on firms’ efficiency.

We explore heterogeneity along:

governance mode (relational vs. conventional GVCs);firm positioning (suppliers vs. final firms);time length of participation (new entrants vs. established GVCs).


Main Results

Firms involved in GVCs are, on average, more efficient.

Disproportional efficiency gains for complex and strong inter-firmrelationships involving knowledge exchange.

Benefits are greater for suppliers (generally suffering from a produc-tivity discount) than final companies.

Gains take less time to manifest for relational GVCs, while occurringin a longer time period for conventional GVCs.


Data

MET survey on the Italian industry:

Three-waves survey: 2009, 2011, and 2013.Roughly 25,000 observations per wave, representative at size (all classes),region, and industry levels.Rich set of information including: purchasing/selling matrix, type of goodsold & purchased, inter-firm networks, participation to the design of thefinal product, R&D, share of sales to other companies (final vs. suppliers),import, export, etc.In this paper: focus on SMEs and manufacturing sector only.

Firm-level balance-sheet data: Cribis D&B.

Select companies with complete balance sheets in the 5 years of in-terest (to compute DEA).


GVC participation

A firm is considered to belong to a GVC if (at least) one of thefollowing conditions occurs:

it exports semifinished goods;

it is fully internationalized (export and import);

it is partially internationalized (export or import) and declares tobe involved in “significant and long-lasting relationships withforeign companies”.

Relational GVCs ⇒ strong relationships, high switching cost, highdegree of knowledge exchange and specificity of investment:

belongs to a GVC;

declares to have strong ties with foreign counterparts for trade pur-poses;

highly involved in the conception (R&D) and design for the finalproduct.


DEA

Retrieve the dependent variable: pure technical efficiency (max out-put given resources and technology)

DEA approach (Charnes et al., 1978): efficiency based on the firm-specific distance from a piece-wise production frontiere (locus oftechnically-efficient input-output combinations).

Allows for variable returns to scale (not all firms are assumed to beoperating at their optimal scale, especially true when dealing withSMEs).

Estimate relative efficiency in a given group of units. Benchmark:all observations in a given year in the belonging sector

Inefficiency as measured by an excessive use of inputs given output(or too little output given inputs).


Efficiency distribution: GVC vs REL

Non parametric tests (Kruksal and Wallis, 1852) confirmsignificance.


Efficiency distribution by positioning: GVC vs REL


Empirical Analysis

GVC participation potentially endogenous: self selection of persis-tently more efficient companies (upward bias)

Econometric analysis on propensity-score matching (PSM).

Focus on the subset of companies with the same ex ante probabilityof being in a GVC and that only differ for actual participation.

Robustness through bootstrapped truncated Simar and Wilson (2007)and Heckman (1979) models.


Balancing properties


Baseline results


Analysis on new entrants


Conclusions

We explore the effect of GVC participation on firms’ pure efficiency.

Survey data to propose a novel taxonomy of GVC participationmodes.

We take care of endogeneity issues by exploiting PSM and truncated-regression models and show:

significant efficiency premia for firms involved in GVCs;.belonging to a GVC is not, per se, a boost, the type of relationship iscritical;complex and strong inter-firm relationships involving knowledge exchangeprovide the best environment for efficianecy gains;benefits are greater for suppliers;gains take less time to manifest for relational GVCs.


firms' efficiency and global value chains: an empirical ... brancati.pdf · gvc participation...

Documents