Person:
Winkler, Deborah
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
International economics,
Global value chains,
Export competitiveness,
Foreign direct investment,
Offshoring,
Trade
Degrees
Departments
Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
May 9, 2023
Biography
Deborah Winkler is a Senior Economist in the World Bank Group’s Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment Global Practice. Deborah has worked on issues of global value chains, offshoring, export competitiveness, foreign direct investment, and trade in services; their determinants; and their economic and social effects. She is particularly interested in the role that policy can play in shaping the trade-development nexus and has offered her policy analysis and advice to a variety of client countries spanning all world regions.
Ms. Winkler is the author and editor of several flagship publications at the World Bank, including Making Global Value Chains Work for Development (with Daria Taglioni) and Making Foreign Direct Investment Work for Sub-Saharan Africa (with Thomas Farole). Recently, Deborah was a lead author of the Women and Trade Report: The Role of Trade in Promoting Gender Equality and a core team member of the World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains. She is a former Research Associate of the New School for Social Research and received her PhD in economics from the University of Hohenheim in Germany where she authored Outsourcing Economics (with William Milberg, CUP) and Services Offshoring and Its Impact on the Labor Market (Springer). Her articles have appeared in several journals and edited volumes.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 17
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Publication
Pandemic Trade: Covid-19, Remote Work and Global Value Chains
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01)This paper studies the trade effects of Covid-19 using monthly disaggregated trade data for 28 countries and multiple trading partners from the beginning of the pandemic to June 2020. Regression results based on a sector-level gravity model show that the negative trade effects induced by Covid-19 shocks varied widely across sectors. Sectors more amenable to remote work contracted less throughout the pandemic. Importantly, participation in global value chains increased traders’ vulnerability to shocks suffered by trading partners, but it also reduced their vulnerability to domestic shocks. -
Publication
How Do Multinationals Report Their Economic, Social, and Environmental Impacts?: Evidence from Global Reporting Initiative Data
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-12)This paper examines the role of multinational enterprises in sustainability reporting. The study assesses how multinational enterprise status correlates with a company's average disclosure rate and probability of reporting on economic, labor and social, environmental, and governance indicators. It uses a unique data set that offers company-level information on sustainability reporting from the Global Reporting Initiative, which covers 2,020 companies in 81 countries and 54 sustainability indicators. The summary statistics show that multinational enterprises and large domestic companies have higher average disclosure rates than small and medium-size enterprises. However, the econometric analysis suggests that multinational enterprise status does not matter for the average disclosure rate, but company size shows a strongly positive correlation. Differentiating by type of multinational enterprise reveals that the relationship becomes positive and significant for private companies. By contrast, the correlation between multinational enterprise status and the average disclosure rate does not vary by listing status, sector, region, or income level. Focusing on the relationship by development category also shows no significant correlation. Finally, accounting for the heterogeneity of the sustainability indicators, the study analyzes the relationship between multinational enterprise status and the probability of disclosure at the detailed indicator level, and confirms a significant correlation for 12 indicators. -
Publication
SACU in Global Value Chains: Measuring GVC Integration, Position, and Performance of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01)Once concentrated among a few large economies, global flows of goods, services, and capital now reach an ever larger number of economies worldwide. Global trade in goods and services increased 10 times between 1980 and 2011, while FDI flows increased almost 30-fold. The sales from foreign-owned firms amount to $26 trillion. As many as 3,000 bilateral investment treaties have been signed to create the framework of deep agreements needed not only to facilitate the global movement of final goods and services but also to internationalize entire processes of production. All these flows have grown over time, creating increasingly dense and complex networks. This note is intended provide an overview of SACU countries’ participation and performance in GVCs, drawing on several data sources and indicators, and most importantly the recently released 189-country Eora multi-region-input-output (MRIO) database (Lenzen et al. 2012, 2013). Following this introduction, the note is structured in five additional sections. Section two discusses in greater detail the scope of the report, including the data sources and methodological approaches, as well as their respective limitations. Section three looks at structural integration in trade, including the degree to which SACU countries import and export intermediates. Section four analyzes trends in value-added exports as a first step in exploring GVC participation. Section five hones in on the core measures of GVC participation and a brief analysis of SACU countries’ position in GVCs. Finally, section six concludes by bringing together the main findings from the analysis. -
Publication
Trade in Global Value Chains: An Assessment of Labor Market Implications
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-07-16)The paper is structured in six further sections following this introduction. Section two develops a conceptual framework, and reviews the literature on the relationship between trade integration and labor market outcomes. Section three outlines the empirical framework and data used in the analysis. Section four presents results on the relationship between overall trade integration (through exports) and labor market outcomes. Section five then focuses specifically on GVC trade, and assesses the relationship between labor market outcomes and GVC integration as a buyer and as a seller. Section six tests if select policy indicators mediate these relationships between trade integration and labor market outcomes. Finally, section seven concludes, with a summary of results and areas for future research. -
Publication
Determinants of Global Value Chain Participation: Cross-Country Evidence
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-03)The past decades witnessed big changes in international trade with the rise of global value chains. Some countries, such as China, Poland, and Vietnam, rode the tide, while other countries, many in the Africa region, faltered. This paper studies the determinants of participation in global value chains, based on empirical evidence from a panel data set covering more than 100 countries over the past three decades. The evidence shows that factor endowments, geography, political stability, liberal trade policies, foreign direct investment inflows, and domestic industrial capacity are very important in determining participation in global value chains. These factors affect participation in global value chains more than traditional exports. -
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Services Offshoring and Its Impact on Productivity and Employment: Evidence from Germany, 1995-2006
( 2010)Economists have recently recognised services offshoring as an important influence on domestic labour market outcomes. Services are of particular interest since their significance has grown in terms of both quantity and quality. Only one and a half decades ago, most services were considered non-tradable, but the emergence and development of new information and communication technologies has made many services internationally tradable. The liberalisation of international trade in services trade has further accelerated the volume of services trade. Our econometric estimations focus on services offshoring by German manufacturing sectors. We use revised input-output data from 1995 to 2006. We first estimate the impact of services offshoring on labour productivity. We then measure the effects of services offshoring on labour demand. The results show that services offshoring increased sectoral labour productivity, but reduced German manufacturing employment. The overall results suggest that labour demand decreased over 1995-2006, because labour-reducing productivity and substitution effects dominated labour-augmenting scale effects from services offshoring. -
Publication
The Role of Global Value Chains for Worker Tasks and Wage Inequality
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-09)This paper studies the relationship between participation in global value chains, worker routine task intensity, and within-country wage inequality. It uses unique survey data from 47 countries across the development spectrum to calculate worker-level, country-specific routine task intensity and combines them with sectoral measures of backward and forward global value chains participation. Higher global value chains participation is associated with more routine-intensive work, specifically among offshorable occupations, especially in countries at lower development levels. The results by broad sectors contrast sharply: higher global value chains participation is linked to a higher routine task intensity in offshorable occupations in the industry but a lower routine task intensity in non-offshorable occupations in business services. Higher worker-level routine task intensity is strongly associated with lower wages, so global value chains participation indirectly widens the within-country wage inequality through this routine task intensity channel. At the same time, global value chains participation directly contributes to reduced wage inequality, except for the richest countries. Overall, this analysis finds that global value chains participation reduces wage inequality in most low- and middle-income countries that receive offshored jobs but widens wage inequality in high-income countries that offshore jobs. -
Publication
Making Global Value Chains Work for Development
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-05)Global value chains (GVCs) are playing an increasingly important role in business strategies, which has profoundly changed international trade and development paradigms. GVCs now represent a new path for development by helping developing countries accelerate industrialization and the servicification of the economy. From a firm perspective, production in the context of GVCs highlights the importance of being able to seamlessly connect factories across borders, as well as protect assets such as intellectual property. From the policy maker perspective, the focus is on shifting and improving access to resources while also advancing development goals, and also on the question of whether entry into GVCs delivers labor-market-enhancing outcomes for workers at home, as well as social upgrading. GVCs can lead to development, but, at the country level, constraints such as the supply of various types of labor and skills and inadequate absorptive capacity remain. GVCs can create new opportunities on the labor demand side, but supply and demand cannot meet if the supply is missing. This potential gap illustrates the importance of embedding national GVC policies into a broader portfolio of policies aimed at upgrading skills, physical and regulatory infrastructure, and enhancing social cohesion. -
Publication
Export Competitiveness in Indonesia's Manufacturing Sector
(World Bank, Jakarta, 2012-09)The Indonesian manufacturing sector experienced a 'lost decade' in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. While many believe that the sector is now in inexorable decline, this note argues that there may be a 'second chance' for export manufacturing, given Indonesia's relative cost competitiveness, the rapidly growing domestic market, and the opportunities of integrating into value chains facilitated by new regional growth poles. Simply relying on these factors, however, may result in short-term growth but will ultimately lead back to stagnation. Instead, Indonesia must use this opportunity to make an aggressive effort to improve manufacturing sector competitiveness, including addressing traditional investment climate issues, but most importantly, weaknesses in the quality and innovation environment. It is through this that the Indonesian manufacturing sector will begin to move up the value chain, build deep and competitive domestic value chains, and deliver quality and sustainable job opportunities. -
Publication
Global Value Chain Integration and Productivity: Evidence from Enterprise Surveys in Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-02-26)In order to adequately measure a firm’s participation in GVCs in this context, it is important to first identify the different forms through which GVC integration can affect domestic firms’ productivity. Integrating a country’s domestic suppliers into GVCs increases the possibility for productivity gains through exporting to a buyer abroad or supplying to a multinational in the country. But countries should not neglect the opportunities for productivity gains that GVC participation can provide from a buyer’s perspective. Instead of building a complete array of supply chains at home, firms can join existing supply chains of multinationals through cross-border trade in intermediates and components (Taglioni and Winkler 2015). While Farole and Winkler (2014) focus on the productivity spillovers from multinationals in a country, this note looks at the impact of cross-border sales to international buyers (exporting) or purchases of inputs from international sellers (importing) in GVCs. This note is structured as follows. Section two reviews the relevant literature with regard to productivity effects from GVC participation as well as the role of domestic firm characteristics in this context. Section three introduces the data and econometric model. In section four the author presents our regression results, while section five concludes.