The drivers of global value chain (GVC) participation in EU member states

Integration within the EU single market increases the interconnection and interdependence of the EU economies. Global value chain (GVC) participation has become one of the most widely used indicators to measure the dispersion of the production process among different countries. The EU member states rate differently in the GVC participation index. The highest participation is in Luxembourg and Slovakia and the lowest is in Croatia. The aim of this paper is to identify the most important variables that influence the GVC participation index in the EU member states (EU-15 and EU new member states). The research employs dynamic panel data (GMM) methodology. The obtained results are very similar for the EU-15 and EU-NMS indicating that the most important drivers of GVC participation are: GDP growth, lag GVC participation, FDI, development of financial sector, share of services in GDP and share of high-tech products in export, and level of wages. However, the indicators and strength of the influence of some of these variables differ between the two groups of countries.