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 - 2 of 2
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Publication
Firm Location and the Determinants of Exporting in Developing Countries
( 2011-08-01)Using a cross-section of more than 40,000 manufacturing and services firms in 79 developing countries from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys Database, this paper assesses how firm location determines the likelihood and extent of exporting in developing countries. Descriptive statistics confirm higher export participation (but not intensity) for firms in core versus non-core regions, despite the finding that firms in the core assess many aspects of the investment climate more negatively. Results from a probit model show that, in addition to firm-specific characteristics, both regional investment climate and agglomeration factors have a significant impact on export participation. Specifically, customs clearance and electricity quality matter for export participation for manufacturing firms. Although localization economies and export spillovers are associated with increased exporting, the opposite is found for urbanization economies for both manufacturing and services firms. The analysis finds that firm-level determinants of exporting matter more for firms located in non-core regions, while regional determinants and agglomeration economies play a larger role in core regions. The findings point to the presence of congestion costs in the core, and suggest that policy interventions to target export participation are likely to have a greater impact if they are focused on core regions over non-core regions, where firm-specific factors predominate. Moreover, the importance of export spillovers and localization economies highlights the potential value of efforts to remove barriers to natural agglomeration both in core and non-core regions, for example through investments in infrastructure, the provision of social services, and regional integration arrangements. -
Publication
Trade Crisis and Recovery : Restructuring of Global Value Chains
( 2010-05-01)The recent large and rapid slowdown in economic activity has resulted in even larger and more rapid declines in international trade. As world trade is set to rebound, this paper addresses three questions: (i) Will trade volumes rebound in a symmetric fashion as world economic growth rebounds? (ii) Will the crisis result in a change in the structure of trade, and in particular will it lead to a reversal of the pattern of more diversified sourcing and thus to a consolidation of global value chains? (iii) What policies can improve the prospects for developing country growth in the event that trade volumes do not rebound symmetrically and there is a consolidation of some global value chains?