The Costs of Exclusion: Gender Job Segregation,Structural Change and the Labour Share of Income

While women's share of employment has risen in many countries over the last two decades, gender job segregation has worsened, with women increasingly excluded from ‘good’ jobs in the industrial sector. In this article, the determinants of gender job segregation are assessed using panel data for a broad set of developing countries covering the period 1991–2015. The effect of gender job segregation on all workers, via the labour share of income, is also analysed. The results identify two major contributors to gender job segregation — the rising capital/labour ratio and the ratio of female/male labour force participation rates — indicative of ‘crowding’ and exclusion as economies move up the industrial ladder. The analysis further indicates that the crowding of women into lower quality jobs has a negative effect on workers as a whole by dampening the labour share of income. Those processes are influenced by global and macroeconomic conditions and policies that have circumscribed the expansion of high‐quality jobs relative to labour supply, intensifying competition for ‘good’ jobs and weakening labour's bargaining power.     

The Political Economy of Class Compromise: Trade Unions,Capital–Labour Relations and Development in North East Brazil1

Abstract: This article investigates how capital–labour relations (encompassing processes of class formation, representation, struggle and compromise) impact on emerging regions’ developmental trajectories. It does so because much of development studies portray labour simply as an input (human capital) subordinate to more fundamental processes such as capital investment and accumulation. The paper draws on and extends insights gained from the “new working class studies” and global commodity chains literatures in order to examine evolving capital–labour relations—from relatively militant struggles to class compromise—in an emerging sector of North East Brazilian export horticulture. It identifies sources of workers’ structural and associational power and uses these to explain significant gains achieved by the region's rural trade union during the formation of the export horticulture sector. It then asks, why, despite continuing structural power, the region's trade union has entered into a class compromise with the leading employers via (a) reducing its militancy and its strategy of striking against employers to win concessions, and (b) shifting its objectives in terms of concessions sought. It speculates on the impacts of these changing class relations on the region's developmental trajectory.     

Competitiveness and Technological Upgrading in Global Value Chains: Evidence from the Indonesian Electronics and Garment Sectors

Indonesia is a rapidly growing and internationally competitive economy that is well integrated into globalized production systems. The global value chain (GVC) model has proven to be a popular analytical framework to explain how global lead firms structure and organize global production through dispersed global suppliers. Indonesia's leading export sectors, garments and electronics, are well integrated into GVCs. Engagement in GVCs, often led by leading global brands, is seen as a basis for local producers to become globally competitive and to grow. It also comes with challenges—local producers must meet the demanding pressures from lead firms on prices, on-time delivery, product quality, and social, environmental and labour standards. The possibilities for local producers to learn, acquire new capabilities and upgrade to enhance their competitiveness are often conditioned by the nature of ties that they have with their global lead firms. Yet, this paper argues, the GVC model fails to recognize agency on the part of local firms in this learning process. Moreover, particular forms of governance arrangements within GVC ties can restrict the prospects for local producers to enhance capabilities and upgrade. Drawing on selected case study evidence from the Indonesian garments and electronics sectors, the paper explores the relationship between distinct types of GVC engagements and firm-level learning and upgrading, and considers how some GVC ties may restrict upgrading.     

Equality‐led Development and the Demand‐ and Supply‐side Effects

This contribution to the Forum Debate on global development focuses on the dimension of functional income distribution between labour and capital and its demand‐side and supply‐side effects. The article summarizes recent literature that has sought to explain the reasons behind the global fall in the labour share. It then discusses the demand‐side effects of the declining wage share on growth, based on the post‐Keynesian/post‐Kaleckian literature. The author presents an alternative policy scenario for the G20 based on a mix of increasing wage share and public investment, before discussing the supply‐side effects of rising inequality. The article concludes with some policy implications for equality‐led development.     

Three worlds of global value chains: multiple governance and upgrading paths in the Korean animation industry

Cultural production is increasingly fragmented and dispersed organizationally and geographically as a result of growing offshore outsourcing within and across firms, giving rise to global value chains (GVCs). Yet, a GVC perspective has been applied limitedly to the study of cultural industries without serious consideration of inter-firm governance structure and its consequences on upgrading. Building upon the GVC literature on multiple governance structure, this paper examines three GVCs in Korea with distinctive governance forms: U.S. outsourcing chains, Japanese outsourcing chains, and international coproduction chains. The two outsourcing chains exhibited marked differences in various governance dimensions with distinctive upgrading patterns. International coproduction chains emerged as an alternative pathway of upgrading after the rapid decline of outsourcing exports, posing unique opportunities and challenges to firms and policy-makers. The findings are discussed in the context of multiple governance structure in GVCs and its implications to upgrading in networked global cultural production.     

Territorial (In) Coherence: Labour and Special Economic Zones in Laos's Border Manufacturing

This article engages literature on special economic zones and territory in global development. I suggest a focus on labour's spatial class composition as constitutive of territorial coherence provides insights into how the Savan‐Seno Special Economic Zone in Lao PDR operates as an economic border territory bridging Laos to the regional and global economies. The distanciated global connections which special economic zones aim to create are predicated on zones gaining internal coherence for capital accumulation. I suggest zones’ internal coherence depends on zone firms reworking the local class composition of labour, itself constituted by workers’ spatial practices. In the Savan‐Seno zone this occurred through immobilising a mobile labour force and taking advantage of its continuing embeddedness within a subsistence rice‐producing village economy. The argument aims to illustrate how zones producing for global markets act as territories of complex spatiality which span and connect multiple spaces of production and workers’ social reproduction.     

A Brave New World,or the Same Old Story with New Characters?

Capitalism has always been a global system, but not in fixed ways. Different national powers have emerged and become dominant over the centuries, but the fundamental processes underlying the uneven development of global capitalism have not altered; they continue to be driven by imperialism — the struggle of large capital over economic territory of various kinds. Since the late 1960s, only the East Asian region has shown notable increases in its share of global GDP, and for the last two decades this has been dominated by the rise of China. This is directly related to the ability of the Chinese state to control the economy and to implement heterodox policies with very high investment rates. However, the Chinese case is exceptional: few other developing countries have followed a trajectory anything like that of China. Meanwhile, internal inequalities have increased across the world, as the bargaining power of capital vis‐à‐vis labour has increased dramatically in every country. This reflects the changed form of 21^st century imperialism, which relies increasingly on the international legal and regulatory architecture as fortified by various multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral agreements that establish the hegemony of global capital in different ways.     

Towards more (un)balanced trade. Production linkages between China and the Visegrad countries: country-level and sector-level analysis*

This article presents the Visegrad Group member countries with special focus on the role of these countries in global value chains (GVCs). The goal of this paper is to analyse the role these states play in global production linkages and evaluation of connections between the VG states and China. We verified two hypotheses: (1) the Visegrad countries have deteriorated their positions in GVCs in relation to China recently; (2) the Visegrad states have become more dependent on Chinese value added in selected sectors. The analysis consists of two steps. Firstly, we evaluated the role of the Visegrad countries in international production linkages with China using value-added foreign trade using country-level approach. Secondly, we focused on the sectoral links between China and the Visegrad countries.     

The Competitive Position of the Basque Aeroespatial Cluster in Global Value Chains: A Historical Analysis

In this paper, based on the case study of the aerospace cluster of the Basque Country (Spain), we aimed at analysing how local industries develop a new specialization, that is, how a cluster emerges, and how it evolves over time. For that purpose, apart from considering local factors (both forces that are internal to the cluster and to the territory), we explicitly consider the role of institutional and technological changes, and how they affect industry structure and governance patterns of global value chains (GVCs). We observe that global-scale regulations (deregulation and competition policy) and technological change, together with local factors such as the existence of anchor firms, local policies, related variety and social capital at regional and cluster levels played a significant role in the emergence of the cluster and how it became inserted in the GVCs. Later on, the development of suppliers' capabilities also had a relevant role in the evolution of the governance patterns of GVCs.     

Transportation–Communication Capital and Economic Growth: A VECM Analysis for Turkey

This paper analyses the short- and long-term relationships between the transportation–communication capital and the output for Turkey. The study applies a Cobb–Douglas production function under the assumption of constant returns to scale and employs co-integration analysis by estimating a vector error correction model (VECM). As a result of the VECM estimation, one co-integrating relationship is detected. The results based on the impulse response function analysis imply that per labour transportation–communication capital appears both to have been a crucial input in the Turkish productive process and to have had a positive crowding in effect on the per labour non-residential total capital formation. Moreover, the results support the argument that the transportation–communication capital has a lagged impact on economic growth. The long-term accumulated elasticity of output to transportation–communication capital has been found to be 0.59. The long-term accumulated marginal product was also calculated. It implies that a 1 Turkish Lira increase in per labour transportation–communication capital results in a long-term rise of 1.45 Turkish Liras in per labour output. All these findings suggest that transportation–communication capital may be a powerful tool for policy-makers to promote long-term per labour real output growth in Turkey.     

Globalisation Lived Locally: A Labour Geography Perspective on Control,Conflict and Response among Workers in Kerala

Abstract: Supported by the labour geography framework, I analyse how spatial practices of labour shape the economic geography of capitalism, by looking into a model not at a global but at a very local scale of organisation and showing its effectiveness while confronting social actors organised at global or extra‐local scales. Questioning global stereotypes on economic responses to globalisation, I argue that labour becomes actively involved in the very process of globalisation and the expansion of capital, empirically demonstrating the relevance of this in the globalisation literature. I deal with one region—Kerala—and processes in its labour markets, taking the case of apparel workers in an export‐promoting industrial park.     

MAKING CHAINS THAT (UN)MAKE THINGS: WASTE–VALUE RELATIONS AND THE BANGLADESHI RUBBISH ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY

There is growing empirical and theoretical interest in post‐consumption activity that results in the capture and creation of value from waste in the global economy. This article engages with two dominant approaches to tracing the capture and creation of value, global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs), and their shared call to examine waste disposal and recycling. Using non‐participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, and a survey we examine what happens to the products of one of GVCs ‘and GPNs’ paradigmatic industries, electronics, when they are labelled e‐waste and are imported into Dhaka, Bangladesh, as rubbish electronics. Rather than wasting and final disposal predominating, our research documents a substantial rubbish recovery economy that captures and creates value anew. Consequently, we argue that both GVC and GPN approaches must rethink how they theorize the capture and creation of value.     

Multi‐scalar Labour Agency in Global Production Networks: Contestation and Crisis in the South African Fruit Sector

Integration into global production networks poses significant challenges, and also opens up opportunities, for labour agency. Governance by lead firms affects working conditions and can drive precarious employment; this interacts with and can constrain national labour legislation covering labour rights. The global production networks (GPN) approach facilitates examination of commercial value chains, their interaction with institutionally and societally embedded labour markets, and potential leverage points for labour contestation transcending local, national and global scales. This informs analysis of commercial/societal articulations as contested processes opening space for multi‐scalar labour agency within global production networks. This article examines how tensions between global commercial and societally embedded dimensions of global production networks drive precarious work, and seeks to understand the implications for emergent forms of multi‐scalar community‐based labour agency. These questions are explored through an examination of labour casualization and contestation in South African fruit production in 2012–13, using the GPN approach. The authors find that multi‐scalar channels of labour agency leveraging both global commercial and government actors can enable reworking by unorganized community‐based labour to bargain for better pay and conditions, but if the underlying global commercial logic is to be challenged, more systemic strategies are required.     

Global Value Chains,Industrial Policy and Economic Upgrading in Ethiopia's Apparel Sector

This article examines whether low-income countries can still benefit from participating in manufacturing global value chains (GVCs) in terms of broader industrial development in a global context of greater competition and higher requirements. It contends that developing internationally competitive local firms and domestic linkages, in addition to upgrading, is crucial for participation in GVCs to drive industrialization. The study focuses on Ethiopia's recent experience with developing an apparel export industry through strategic industrial policy. Based on original empirical data collected through firm-level surveys and interviews with government officials, industry experts and buyers, the article analyses the upgrading and localization trajectories of foreign and local apparel-exporting firms. It argues that value-capture benefits in assembly positions in apparel GVCs have become more difficult. The potential for localization benefits depends on the type of global buyers and foreign producers and their levels of embeddedness, but whether this potential is realized also depends on local firm characteristics and related industrial policy. Ethiopia's industrial policy has been relatively successful regarding national economy linkages, but less successful in developing competitive local export firms due to a weak local manufacturing tradition combined with a global context that has led to a supplier squeeze.     

Interstate Differences in Relative Export Performance: A Test of Factor Endowments Theory

In a state-level analysis, relative export efficiencies are regressed on the capital (labor) intensity of production across industries. Resulting parameters are regressed on human and physical capital endowments. Factor endowments are significant, but account for limited variation; global product demand, scale economies, and industrial inertia may also be important determinants.     

LABOUR AND LANDSCAPES: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LANDESQUE CAPITAL IN NINETEENTH CENTURY TANGANYIKA

In a long‐term and global perspective irrigated and terraced landscapes, landesque capital, have often been assumed to be closely associated with hierarchical political systems. However, research is accumulating that shows how kinship‐based societies (including small chiefdoms) have also been responsible for constructing landesque capital without population pressure. We examine the political economy of landesque capital through the intersections of decentralized politics and regional economies. A crucial question guiding our research is why some kinship‐based societies chose to invest their labour in landesque capital while others did not. Our analysis is based on a detailed examination of four relatively densely populated communities in late pre‐colonial and early colonial Tanzania. By analysing labour processes as contingent and separate from political types of generalized economic systems over time we can identify the causal factors that direct labour and thus landscape formation as a process. The general conclusion of our investigation is that landesque investments occurred in cases where agriculture was the main source of long‐term wealth flow irrespective of whether or not hierarchical political systems were present. However, while this factor may be a necessary condition it is not a sufficient cause. In the cases we examined, the configurations of world‐systems connections and local social and economic circumstances combined to either produce investments in landesque capital or to pursue short‐term strategies of extraction.     

South–South? Culture Talk and Labour Relations at a Chinese‐owned Factory in Hungary

In 2011, a large Hungarian chemical factory was acquired by a Chinese competitor. The resulting encounter between Chinese managers and Hungarian staff — which took place in the context of a harsh retrenchment that has curtailed the powers of organized labour in Hungary — highlights the inadequacy of dichotomies such as North/South, East/West and socialist/capitalist. As with other corporate acquisitions in Europe, Chinese managers expected to ‘learn’ from ‘advanced Western management practices’; instead, they found what they interpreted as a backward, ‘socialist’ work culture in need of modernization. For their part, Hungarian staff feared the imposition of a culturally inappropriate ‘Asian labour discipline’, but have come to see at least some of the changes as part of a necessary modernization. ‘Asian’, ‘European’, ‘Western’ and ‘socialist’ are floating signifiers used by both Chinese and Hungarian staff at the factory in various, often contradictory ways to justify management choices, staff resistance or individual preferences. As a result of their analysis, the authors suggest that discussions about the impact of Chinese investment on labour practices should recognize a wider range of contexts, including the presence of precarious socioeconomic environments within the so‐called ‘advanced economies’.     

Profitability or Industrial Relations: What Explains Manufacturing Performance across Indian States?

This article begins with a critique of the well-known claim by Besley and Burgess concerning the negative impact of labour regulation on organized sector manufacturing performance in India. In the second part of the article, the authors use a state-level panel data set for the period 1969–2005 to analyse the relative importance of profitability (rate of profit as a percentage of the total replacement cost of capital stock) and industrial disputes (man-days lost to all industrial disputes as a percentage of total workers employed) to explain cross-state variations of manufacturing performance in India's organized sector. Using three different measures of manufacturing performance — net value added, investment and employment — they find that profitability is more significant than industrial disputes in explaining the variation of manufacturing sector performance across Indian states. The findings presented here therefore question the uncritical acceptance of Besley and Burgess's results in the literature on labour regulation.     

The Regional Allocation of Public Investment: Efficiency or Equity?

In this paper we examine the effect of public investment on the regional economies of Japan. The efficient policy for regional allocation of public capital is to invest in highly productive regions, whereas the actual policy pursues equity goals by allocating more public investment to depressed regions. We determine the effects of this equity- oriented allocation by estimating the aggregate regional production function and calculating the productivity of public capital stock for each region, using a cross-sectional time-series data set. Our results show that the marginal productivity of public capital has recently declined in most depressed regions, whereas the productivity in developed regions (e.g., Tokyo, Osaka) has increased slightly. We compare alternative policies of allocating public investment and their effects on the regional and national economies using numerical simulations. We then quantitatively describe the trade-off between the efficient and the equitable allocation of public investment.     

Dynamics of Value Chain Governance: Increasing Supplier Competence and Changing Power Relations in the Periphery of Automotive Production—Evidence from Bursa,Turkey

Adopting a global value chain (GVC) approach, this paper focuses on the ways in which global automotive transnational corporations coordinate their value chains with suppliers in the periphery of automotive production. In particular, it directs attention to particular forms of chain relations established by lead firms with suppliers in Turkey and the ways in which these chains are coordinated. Findings indicate that as component suppliers in the periphery of automotive production, such as those in Bursa, have gained the competencies not only to manufacture to the cost, quality and flexibility specifications required by their customers but also of design and product development, lead firms in the automotive industry have turned to modular value chains, where competent suppliers provide a range of services with less dependence on their customers, as a way of sourcing from these suppliers. I use this evidence to argue that GVC governance is dynamic and suppliers in the periphery have some room for breaking power asymmetries associated with specific modes of governance in GVCs.