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  3. American Economic Review
  4. May 2012
  5. Measuring the Upstreamness of Production and Trade Flows

Measuring the Upstreamness of Production and Trade Flows

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Abstract

We propose two distinct approaches to the measurement of industry upstreamness (or average distance from final use) and show that they yield an equivalent measure. Furthermore, we provide two additional interpretations of this measure, one of them related to the concept of forward linkages. We construct this measure for 426 industries using the 2002 US input-output Tables. We also construct our measure using data from selected countries in the OECD STAN database. Finally, we present an application of our measure that explores the determinants of the average upstreamness of exports at the country level using trade flows for 2002.

Citation

Antràs, Pol, Davin Chor, Thibault Fally, and Russell Hillberry. 2012. "Measuring the Upstreamness of Production and Trade Flows." American Economic Review, 102 (3): 412-16. DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.3.412

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • F14 Country and Industry Studies of Trade
  • L14 Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation; Networks