William Powers

Email: William.Powers@usitc.gov


William PowersWilliam Powers is an international economist in the Research Division of the US International Trade Commission. His recent work focuses on global value chains, trade finance during the global financial crisis, effects of regional trade agreements, and other empirical trade topics with policy relevance. William also worked as a senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisors under both Presidents Bush and Obama.




Papers Published in World Economics:


The Value of Value Added

As production has become more globally integrated, imported components account for a rising share of the value of exports. Many countries may contribute inputs to a good, and the final assembler may capture only a small share of the product’s value. Official trade statistics, which attribute all value to the final exporter, can be uninformative or misleading about a country’s global engagement and its participation in global supply chains. New measures are required that incorporate both production and trade, and track the flow of inputs, and their value, through industries and across national borders. This paper examines the construction and use of value-added measures that incorporate the necessary production and trade data, and evaluates their performance against similar measures based on gross trade. The value-added measures provide a more revealing look into global integration that is consistent across different measures and analytical approaches.

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