Download or read book Measuring Vertical Specialization written by Judith M. Dean and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive growth of Chinese trade may be due to international production fragmentation, but few have assessed these phenomena together, in part, because it is difficult to measure the vertical specialization (VS) of China's trade. Unique features of China's processing trade cause both identification of imported inputs and their allocation across sectors to vary by trade regime. This paper estimates the VS of Chinese merchandise exports, addressing these two challenges. A new method to identify Chinese imported inputs is developed, and used to calculate VS by sector and destination. VS estimates based on the official Chinese input-output table are contrasted with those based on a split table, capturing processing and normal exports separately. Last, the paper tests whether Chinese “export sophistication” can be explained by VS.