“Global Value Chains”(The Nikkei Press, 2019)

Satoshi Inomata(Institute of Developing Economies, JETRO Chief Senior Researcher)

It is my utmost pleasure to be awarded the honourable MASAYOSHI OHIRA Memorial Prize. I am extremely happy to see my work appreciated in such a way because I had come along a rather plain life without any public recognition up until this book was published. I would like to thank everyone in the MASAYOSHI OHIRA Memorial Foundation and the Award Selection Committee for presenting this wonderful occasion to us.
The issue of economic globalisation has captured interests of many researchers for long, and it has been widely studied from various analytical perspectives with distinctive methodologies. The concept of Global Value Chains (GVCs), in contrast, is quite new, and still remains unfamiliar to the general public, especially in Japan.
However, our world is rapidly changing: the US-China frictions, global warming, poverty issues, and ongoing pandemic … The GVC approach is now earning an extensive attention since it is deemed to provide strong implications for today’s imperative issues.
The GVC study is a melting pot of intellect from various scientific disciplines: economics, political science, sociology, business studies, statistics, and so on. This inevitably makes it difficult to define its conceptual boundaries as the relevant researches continue to flourish in multiple directions. Accordingly, the author was driven to gather pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and complete an entire picture of what’s going on in this field, which eventually brought this book into existence.
“Value chains” literally refer to the chains that connect individual values generated at different occasions in different places. My research work is just like that, and the book is indeed a product of connecting the knowledge of various researchers in related fields.
And last but not least, the publication of the title would have never been possible without a help of Mr. Shuuich Hirai, the editor of the book, who deserves my greatest gratitude.

Profile
[Education]
BA with Honours in Politics and Economics, University of London, UK, June 1990.
MSc in Development Economics, University of Oxford, UK, July 1991.
PhD in Economics, Hitotsubashi University, Japan, March 2014.
[Professional Career]
1991 Institute of Developing Economies, JETRO
2000-02 Visiting Research Fellow, University of London.
2017 – Current position.
[Other professional activities]
The President of the International Input-Output Association (2019.01 -),
A member of the Editorial Board of Economic Systems Research (2012.10 -).