1. Contact: nadim.ahmad@oecd.org
Measuring Trade in Value-Added OECD National Accounts Working Party Meeting Paris October 2011
Contact:

2. Trade in Value-Added
Increasing recognition that gross estimates of trade may create ‘misleading perceptions’ (Pascal Lamy), and imperfect policies in a number of areas, including:
dealing with bilateral trade imbalances
dealing with the impact of macro-economic shocks on supply-chains
understanding the importance of trade to jobs
Leading to a call for new metrics that better respond to these issues.

3. The iPod The Apple iPod = 299$ of Chinese ‘exports’ to US
Distribution of the value added
299 US$
75$ profit to US (Apple)
73$ whls/retail US (Apple)
75$ to Japan (Toshiba)
60$ 400 parts from Asia
15$ 16 parts from the US
2$ assembly by China 3

4. Responding to needs
IO tables provide a means to respond to these developments by measuring interconnectedness of trade and trade in value-added terms.
A number of initiatives have been launched using interconnected IO tables ( a world IO table).
Including a two-year project of the OECD (STD/TAD/STI).

5. International Collaboration
Various initiatives pooling resources to identify best practices for allocation of bilateral trade flows within IO tables.
But recognition:
that a long-term approach is needed to ‘institutionalise’ estimates of trade in value-added.
And that its international nature requires the involvement of an international agency or international consortia.
Formalising collaboration with WTO and IDE-JETRO, and exploring closers links with USITC.

6. Indicator & data sharing with IDE-JETRO and WTO in TiVA Project
Common to WTO and the OECD: publically available
Value added in trade “headline” indicator:
bilateral flows;
by sector to the degree possible.
Shared by OECD
and IDE-JETRO
Input-Output tables, methodological assumptions and bilateral trade flow data
OECD “analytical” data on trade in services, trade by enterprise, intangibles
and income flows.
OECD
only

7. What do we know now: Import contents of exports (2005)
Source: OECD Inter-country inter-industry model (March 2011)

8. Import contents of exports
Source: OECD Inter-country I-O model, 2011

9. And globalisation continues apace
As production processes continue to become more fragmented and chains become more interconnected.
Processing trade increasing in China.
Driven by technological advancement, reduced transaction costs and trade policy reform.
Reinforcing the need for on-going and robust estimates

10. Work Plan And investigating the scope to trace property income flows.
Estimates can be produced now, but necessarily require assumptions relating to BTD IO flows.
Much of the work over next two years will be in improving the nature of these assumptions, by:
Developing improved estimates of BTD by Industry and End-Use
Improving BTD by services
Using firm-level micro data
Decomposing value-added into ‘labour’ and ‘capital’ flows.
Contribution of intangibles (R&D and software)
And investigating the scope to trace property income flows.

11. Chinese High Tech Exports by Ownership
(% of the total)

12. Tangibles vs. intangibles Investment in fixed and intangible assets
as a percentage of GDP, 2006
Source: OECD STI Scoreboard Data on intangible investment are based on COINVEST [ and national estimates by researchers. Data for fixed investment are OECD calculations based on OECD, Annual National Accounts and EU KLEMS Databases, March 2010.

13. What can WPNA do?
Support the initiative and related developments especially in:
Bilateral trade flows
Measurement of IPP investment by industry
Continue to improve comparability of employment estimates with value-added.
More detailed IO tables?
Breakdowns by Foreign/domestic ownership?