Measures of trade in value-added (TiVA) have transformed our ability to understand the scale and complexity of global value chains. However, to a large extent, the accuracy of these estimates is determined by the granularity of information used to construct them. Because exporting firms typically have higher shares of imports in their intermediate inputs than non-exporting firms in the same sector, input-output tables that do not account for firm heterogeneity provide lower-bound estimates of the importance of imports for exports, and therefore undermine the degree of a country or sector’s integration into global value chains (GVCs).

Moreover, additional attention should also be devoted to firms themselves. Even within narrowly defined industries, firms exhibit distinctive characteristics in terms of size, ownership, productivity, and skilled-labour intensity, and therefore they are integrated into GVCs in different ways and to different extends. Since the OECD and some National Statistical Offices first began this research in 2014, studies haves been carried out using either aggregated business data (such as TEC, STEC, AMNE, and SDBS) or in collaboration with national statistical offices using micro-data. Tremendous progress has been made in the past few years, but the country’s coverage remains patchy.

Therefore, the OECD Expert Group on Extended Supply and Use Tables (EGESUTs) is created to promote best practices and to encourage more countries to join these existing efforts. Established in 2014 and officially reporting to the OECD Working Party on National Accounts, the Expert Group is collaborating at an international level with experts from the National Statistical Offices. Its current mandate, which was endorsed in December 2020, is to provide:

• Provide a methodological guide to compiling Extended Supply and Use Tables, which describes best practices (and alternatives) and proposes guidance in the creation of international standards;
• Draft a final report with the results of discussion of Beyond Value Added topics, including jobs and compensations, CO2 and other emissions and income distribution; and
• Facilitate further discussion on particular SUT estimation challenges, including difficulties in (1) the measurement of re-exports, merchanting and processing, (2) the generation of projections and nowcasting, and (3) the breakdowns of imports and exports by partner.

 

Further reading

• The Mandate of the OECD Expert Group on Extended SUTs (2021-2023)
• The OECD’s Handbook on Measuring Extended Supply and Use Tables - Table of Content
• OECD Accounting firm heterogenity in Global Value Chains (Enterprises in Global Value Chains - OECD)
• EGESUT Community Website (access is restricted for members only)
• Handbook on Supply and Use Tables and Input Output-Tables with Extensions and Applications (United Nations)

 

Related projects

• Supply and Use Tables, database (OECD)
• Regional-Global Trade in Value Added Inititives
• OECD Trade in Value Added 
• Supply, Use and Input-Output tables (eurostat)

 

Contact

For any queries about the OECD’s work on Extended Supply and Use Tables, please write to stat.contact@oecd.org.

Tiny url for this page http://oe.cd/egesut