Expanding our knowledge on the globalization of industries. The measurement of international value chains

This paper reviews the business literature on international value chains (IVCs) with the aim to define a consistent conceptual and methodological framework for their measurement. Given the limits of the current empirical evidence, this paper introduces a direct reporting approach. A pilot survey to test the questionnaire was launched in June 2009 using a census sample of around 400 companies resident in the Italian province of Modena. This Italian province provides an interesting empirical setting for the analysis of IVC since it ranks among the top 10 localities (NUTS3 level) in EU27 in terms of per capita manufacturing GDP. It is also characterised by a dense local network of production (business cluster) interconnected with global production filières across a number of high tech as well as traditional industries. Data collected so far seem to confirm the quite successful nature of the survey approach. They also provide some interesting insights on how local manufacturing companies are reacting to the current slowdown of the world economy by reshaping their production networks.