Globalised production, or the butterfly effect in practice

Lecture: Maciej Grodzicki PhD (UJ), moderator: Przemysław Wielgosz (LMD-PL)

So far, global value chains brought us primarily increasingly cheap mass consumption products with labels like Made in China, Vietnam, India… But with the outbreak of the pandemic they revealed their production “underbelly” with all its complexity and vulnerability. A downturn in production and trade is a good moment to take a closer look at these internal structures of global economy. Also because in the recent years, global value chains have been in the centre of the economic theory and the debate on economic policy. In what light the pandemic presents the popular concept of global value chains – in its theoretical function, as well as the development strategy offered to the countries of the global South? Does the optimistic vision of the neoclassical economics reflect to any degree the experience of ordinary participants of the chains – Amazon warehouse workers, Pakistani seamstresses, or children working in Nigerian gold mines? And what is actually has to offer to them all? Can we soon expect the reconstruction and regulation of globalisation in a progressive – stabilising and socially just – direction? In the lecture we will argue a point that the organisation of production in global value chains caused the emergence of a new source of systemic risk on a global scale. The crisis we are currently witnessing can be even called the first GVC crisis – caused and transmitted across continents by supply chains.

Information

We decided to move the meeting online. Join us on the Zoom platform.

The seminar will be streamed on our Facebook channel, as well as recorded and archived on YouTube channel. To protect your image, we ask you to keep your cameras and microphones off during the entire event. But we do encourage you to join the discussion and send us questions on the chat. The moderator Przemysław Wielgosz will ask them on your behalf.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81570928632?pwd=aWlQTXNiZFVveGcvemtkYXdueFErdz09

Meeting ID: 815 7092 8632
Passcode: 044333