Similarity Analysis of Exports Value Added by Country and Implication for Korea’s Global Value Added Chains

Purpose - This paper investigates the structure of exports across countries in terms of value added. Exports value added is examined under two categories, domestic and overseas. Using a statistical classification method by distance based on these two value added categories, this paper estimates the similarity of exports value added across countries including Korea. Design/methodology - The model of study is to employ a generalized distance function and then derive the Manhattan and Euclidean distances. The paper also performs cluster analysis using the Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) and hierarchical methods to classify the 44 sample countries considered in this study. Findings - Our main findings are as follows. The 44 countries can be classified under 5 groups by their domestic and overseas value added in exports. Korea has a sandwich global value chains (GVCs) position between Japan, China, and Taiwan in the East Asian region. Originality/value - Existing papers point out the double counting problem of trade statistics as the intermediate goods trade across borders increases. This paper addresses the double counting problem by using the World Input-Output Table. The paper shows the need to explore the similarity of value added in exports structure across countries and investigate the GVCs position and role of each country.