Competitive Conditions in Global Value Chain Networks: An Assessment Using Entropy and Network Analysis.

We investigated competitive conditions in global value chains (GVCs) for a period of fifteen years (2000-2014), focusing on sector structure, countries' dominance and diversification. For this purpose, we used data from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) and examined GVCs as weighted directed networks, where countries are the nodes and value added flows are the edges. We compared the in-and out-weighted degree centralization of the sectoral GVC networks in order to detect the most centralized, on the import or export side, respectively (oligopsonies and oligopolies).