In a context of changing trade policy patterns and increased frequency of shocks to international supply chains, it is increasingly important for policymakers to understand where value is created, where vulnerabilities arise, how shocks travel through production networks and how firms reorganise when confronted with geopolitical tensions, price volatility, technological change and new policy priorities.
The OECD Trade in Value Added (TiVA) initiative has helped policymakers better understand these questions for more than a decade. Building on inter-country input-output tables1, TiVA indicators show that exports are not only final products sold abroad. They also embody foreign inputs, domestic value added used in other countries and services that support production, logistics, finance, design, distribution and after-sales activities. This makes value-added data essential for understanding modern trade, including because they make it possible to identify which countries are positioned upstream or downstream within global supply chains.
Trends in Global Value Chains introduces three complementary datasets that facilitate a thorough understanding of how global production is organised.
The first is the OECD Previous Year’s Prices Inter-Country Input-Output database (OECD PYP ICIO). It allows GVC indicators to be analysed in real terms, making it possible to distinguish changes in prices from changes in volumes. This is essential in the current inflationary environment.
The second is the OECD Analytical Activities of Multinational Enterprises database (Analytical AMNE). GVCs are not organised only through trade. A large part of international integration takes place through firms that establish affiliates abroad, transfer knowledge and technology within corporate networks, and combine production, trade and investment across jurisdictions. Ownership-based indicators make this dimension of global production visible.2
The third is a new set of TiVA indicators for services by mode of supply (TiVA-MoS), derived from the Analytical AMNE database. Services are a central component of GVCs. They are traded across borders, embedded in goods, supplied digitally, and delivered through affiliates established abroad. New indicators presented in this report provide a comprehensive picture of how services are supplied internationally, including through commercial presence abroad.
These three datasets respond to a common policy need: to better understand GVCs at a time when they are under pressure and undergoing change. Taken together, they provide a comprehensive view of how economies participate in GVCs. They provide tools for identifying exposure to foreign inputs, assessing the domestic value generated by exports, analysing the role of multinational enterprises, and measuring the international supply of services more comprehensively. These tools can inform policies on trade, investment, industrial development, services regulation, economic security and supply chain resilience.
The value of these datasets also lies in their international comparability. GVCs are, by definition, cross-border phenomena. No single country can fully understand its position in production networks using national data alone. Comparable OECD datasets allow governments to benchmark their economies, identify sectoral patterns, assess bilateral and regional linkages, and understand how domestic policies interact with global production structures. They also provide a common statistical foundation for international dialogue.