240111 FS FM1 - Research Seminar (Part 1) - Research Design (2018W)

This is a two-semester long course on global production networks and inequality. The first semester has the objective to develop an own research project and a theoretically and empirically informed research design on a topic related to the main theme of the course. This includes identifying a concrete research topic, formulating research questions and developing a methodological approach to operationalize the research project. The research design developed during this semester will be the basis for actually conducting the research envisaged and writing a research paper in the spring semester 2019.

Inequality within countries and between countries and individuals is among today’s crucial development issues. The evolvement and proliferation of “global production networks”, led by transnational corporations, has in the past three decades changed the structure of international trade and global production, with important implications on inequality. The extension of global production networks has provided opportunities for firms and producers in the Global South to enter and upgrade in the global economy. However, it can also lock firms and countries in low value added activities relying on static competitive advantages in terms of low production (often labor) costs without long lasting benefits for learning and development. The wider social impacts of such integration are often very problematic.

Alongside the profound changes in global production a new strand of literature has emerged in the past two decades that uses chain or network frameworks to conceptualize and analyze economic globalization, how global production is organized and governed and how this affects the development prospects of firms/producers and countries. By stressing the unequal distribution of value added and appropriation of rents between firms in global production networks and relating this to asymmetric power and market structures, these approaches add a global and sectoral perspective to inequality debates.

With their focus on economic upgrading, they analyze how firms and countries can improve their positions within the global economy and the contested nature of these processes. With the more recent focus on social upgrading, inequality within firms and between capital and labour has received more attention. Generally, mechanisms that reproduce systemic inequality and the role of broader institutions therein - such as industrial policy and wage setting institutions on the national level and trade and investment agreements and financialization on the international level - have received limited attention in these approaches. Understanding the role of these mechanisms at different levels is however key for understanding inequality dynamics in global production networks.

In this context, this research seminar critically discusses (i) the evolvement of global production networks and key conceptual approaches to analyze these networks and (ii) their socioeconomic consequences with a focus on inequality dynamics at different levels. The seminar also develops a more general understanding of the research process and particularly of trade data- and interview-based methodologies to conduct research on topics around global production networks. The aim is therefore, first, to get a common base of critical understanding on the literature on global production networks and, second, to be able to develop an own research design on a related topic.

Sessions will involve inputs by the lecturer, discussions based on the required readings and poster presentations by small groups of students. The last sessions will focus on developing, presenting and discussing the students’ individual research projects and designs – in class and in groups organized around common research topics. Students are required to read and prepare the readings for each lecture in advance to allow for an interactive discussion.