ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the origins and trajectories of global value chains (GVCs). It charts their growing significance in global trade and identifies a series of literatures which have documented their global extension. The early documentation of dispersed global production chains was often largely heuristic. By contrast, the contemporary GVC literature is rich in theory and provides important insights into the dynamics of the global economy and the distributional outcomes of growth. The transformation of a heuristic framework into an analytical framework draws on a series of theoretical constructs, namely on changing market dynamics, core competences and rent, chain governance, upgrading, embeddedness and the subordination of labour. The chapter concludes with a discussion of possible future dynamics in GVCs, and in particular the potential impact of the emergence of low and middle income rising powers.
