Attention Economy


Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Globalization and the Irrelevance of the Nationality of Automakers

It is increasingly hard to distinguish the true nationality of various popular car makes. As the BBC piece Is it time to stop thinking of cars in terms of nationality? notes:
“What makes a car German, American or Japanese?
Is it where it is designed, where the parts are manufactured, or where those parts are assembled? Or is it where the brand owner is based?
The answer is more complicated than you may think.”


Related -
An important paper on global supply chains:
Baldwin, Richard and Lopez-Gonzalez, Javier, (2013), Supply-Chain Trade: A Portrait of Global Patterns and Several Testable Hypotheses, No 18957, NBER Working Papers, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Abstract: The trade linked to international production networks - supply-chain trade for short - is associated with momentous global economic changes. This paper presents a portrait of the global pattern of supply-chain trade and how it has evolved since 1995. The paper draws on a variety of data sources but most heavily on the recent World Input-Output Database. China's supply-chain trade receives special attention.