ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS: IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPING ECONOMIES
Keywords:
artificial intelligence, global value chains, developing economies, automation, services trade, digital divide, industrial policy, Uzbekistan.Abstract
For three decades, joining global value chains (GVCs) has been the
main route by which developing economies industrialised: a country could specialise
in one labour-intensive task instead of building a whole industry. Artificial intelligence
(AI) changes the cost structure on which this route rests. This paper identifies four
channels through which AI reshapes GVCs — task automation, lower coordination
and trade costs, greater tradability of services, and the concentration of data, computing
power and rents — and assesses them using simulation results and statistics published
by the WTO, the IMF, UNCTAD and the World Bank. The analysis shows that the
distribution of gains is determined less by the technology itself than by complementary
capabilities: in the WTO benchmark scenario, income gains by 2040 reach 14 per cent
in high-income economies but only 8 per cent in low-income ones, while with better
digital infrastructure and broad AI adoption low-income economies could gain 15 per
cent.
References
1. World Bank. Global Value Chains (GVCs). World Integrated Trade
Solution (WITS). https://wits.worldbank.org/gvc/global-value-chains.html
2. World Bank. World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development
in the Age of Global Value Chains. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/32437
3. World Trade Organization. World Trade Report 2025: Making Trade and
AI Work Together to the Benefit of All. Geneva: WTO, 2025.
https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news25_e/wtr_15sep25_e.htm
4. World Trade Report 2025: Making Trade and AI Work Together to the
Benefit of All — summary. Washington International Trade Association (WITA),
2025. https://www.wita.org/atp-research/wto-report-2025/
5. Gereffi G., Humphrey J., Sturgeon T. The Governance of Global Value
Chains // Review of International Political Economy. 2005. Vol. 12, No. 1. P. 78
104. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09692290500049805
6. Baldwin R. The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the
New Globalization. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
