Globalization and Trade Flows: What You See is Not What You Get!

The trade collapse that followed the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 has led to a renewed interest in measurement issues affecting international merchandise trade statistics in the new globalized economy. The international fragmentation of industrial production blurs the concept of country of origin and calls for the production of new statistics on the domestic content of exports, with a view of estimating trade in value added. In 2010, the international statistical community revised the concepts and definitions on both international merchandise trade and trade in services statistics. This paper discusses the various issues related to the concepts of "goods for processing" and "intra-firm trade" in trade statistics, and provides an overview of the method of analyzing the impact of the fragmentation of production in international value chains.