Trade and Growth in the New Member States: The Role of Global Value Chains

We analyze the determinants of value-added and productivity growth of New Member States in the period between 1995 and 2009. We show that in the analyzed countries, exports contributed to roughly 30% to over 40% of the overall growth of GDP while the contribution of the domestic component varied from negative to over 60%. We show that in the most important export manufacturing industries of the NMS, the growth in exported value added was substantial, while the growth of the domestic component of GDP was mostly due to the growth in services. We associate growth of sectoral productivity with the foreign direct investment and exporting but, more importantly, with the position of a sector/country in the global value chains. We show that sectors that have imported intermediate goods have experienced higher productivity growth. Moreover, faster productivity growth was found in sectors further away from the final demand and in sectors exporting intermediate goods.