POLAND'S PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS: CASE OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITY

The aim of the paper is to determine to what extent the R&D industry in Poland participates in global value chains (GVC), and to determine the place of this industry in these chains. The research tool is the participation in GVC index, being the sum of shares in these chains as a recipient of foreign components used in domestic production (participation index, backward), and as a supplier (producer) of intermediate goods for manufacturing abroad of final products (participation index, forward). The analysis includes latest available data, taken from the EORA (for 2015) and WIOD (for 2014) databases. It has been shown that the R&D industry in Poland participates, but still to a small extent, in the global value chains. Compared to the entire Polish economy, where about half of the exports are carried out under GVC, in the R&D industry this share is about twice lower. A different tendency is also visible in the development the directions of this participation: for the entire Polish economy the share as a recipient of foreign components for domestic production (backward index) clearly prevails over the forward index while in the case of the R&D industry, the backward and forward participation ratios have similar values, and calculations based on EORA even indicate the advantage of forward participation.