Analysis of the Evolution of Approaches to Calculating Value Added in Global Production

Accounting for value added (VA) in international trade, complicated by globalization, poses a significant methodological challenge. The traditional gross trade balance fails to reflect countries’ real contribution to value creation due to production fragmentation and multiple border crossings of goods. This article traces the evolution of conceptual approaches to solving this problem. It examines foundational research that made key contributions to the development of the modern VA calculation mechanism: the works of R. Koopman and colleagues, A. Nagengast and R. Stehrer, A. Borin and M. Mancini, and Timmer and colleagues. These studies eliminated the imbalance between gross turnover and VA turnover, identified the basic components in global value chains (GVCs), solved the “double counting” problem, and offered new perspectives, such as analyzing VA through the lens of types of economic activities. The latter approach allows assessing a country’s development level and its position in GVCs based on the structure of export activities.