In recent years, production networks in East Asia have been expanding beyond borders, with their system of international division of labor becoming increasingly complex. Production processes are being sub-divided, incorporating more countries in the supply chain of a single product. Given these trends, there are concerns in developed countries with advanced technologies and high wages that employment in their manufacturing sectors is being transferred to countries with lower technologies and wages, which is hollowing out their economies.

In developing countries, on the other hand, there are fears that good jobs will remain in developed countries, with only low value-added bad jobs being transferred to them.

Export-led Asian countries have achieved economic growth and development by participating actively in supply chains. However, their growth will come to a halt if they only receive bad jobs. To achieve further growth, they need to take the next step up from industrialization.

The Institute of Developing Economies has been studying global value chains in a completely new effort to understand international trade, not as flows of goods and services but as flows of value added in their production processes. Moreover, in the “World Development Report 2013,” the World Bank raises various issues to promote an understanding of the roles of jobs in overall development—what are the good jobs that contribute to development and what employment policies should be implemented.

At this symposium, we re-examine the significance of good jobs and bad jobs in developed and developing countries based on global value chains. Dr. Richard E. Baldwin (Professor of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, and University of Oxford), who is a leading figure in studies on international trade, will present the academic and policy implications of the results of research focusing on this new concept, while Dr. Martin Rama (Chief Economist for the South Asia region of the World Bank), who headed the team that wrote “Jobs” (World Development Report 2013), will give the keynote report. There will be panel discussions with researchers and experts from universities in Japan and overseas, as well as the Institute of Developing Economies, to examine the impacts of globalization on the economic development of developing countries, and on Japan, from the viewpoint of good jobs and bad jobs, and to address impacts in the field of development policies and on Japan’s growth strategy, as well as our responses going forward. For more details, please visit the IDE-JETRO website.

Presentation Material: Wage employment, mobility and development（PDF）