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arXiv · 1503.00127

How crude oil prices shape the global division of labour

Francesco Picciolo·Andreas Papandreou·Klaus Hubacek·Franco Ruzzenenti
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Abstract

Our work sheds new light on the role of oil prices in shaping the world economy by investigating flows of goods and services through global value chains between 1960 and 2011, by means of Markov Chain and network analysis. We show that over that time period the international division of labor and trade patterns are tightly linked to the price of oil. We demonstrate that this correlation does not depend on the balance of payments nor on the nominal value of trade or trade agreements; it is instead linked to the way the Global Value Chains (GVCs) shape global trade. Our study suggests that transport played an important structural role in shaping GVCs.

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Francesco Picciolo, Andreas Papandreou, Klaus Hubacek, Franco Ruzzenenti. 2015-02-28. How crude oil prices shape the global division of labour. https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.00127

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