This is a two-year research project will investigate the participation of Greece in global value chains (GVCs) at different levels (country, sector, firm), focusing on the underlying role of knowledge flows and innovation development as determinants of the country’s catching-up in terms of structural competitiveness in global markets and leveraging globalization as a growth strategy.

The project has four main objectives:

• To map Greece’s participation in GVCs, providing a rich set of participation indicators at the sector and country level.
• To study the participation incentives, integration strategy and expected benefits at the firm level, through a large-scale survey on selected sectors.
• To investigate the nexus of GVC participation, innovation performance and international competitiveness at the sector and firm level and unveil the underlying structural mechanisms that facilitate or hinder it.
• To provide evidence-driven policy recommendations and inform Greece’s relevant research, technology, and innovation (RTI) policy interventions.

The project will inform Greece’s Smart Specialization (S3) and future RTI strategies, focusing on three main pillars that these strategies aim to facilitate, namely globalization, growth, and competitiveness. The project treats these pillars as an interconnected triangle, where the main challenge is how to leverage globalization as a strategy for growth and competitiveness, through knowledge diffusion and innovation development in GVCs. In particular, the project aims to provide conceptual and empirical insights on the GVC-related dimensions of this triangle, which are rather underexplored for the Greek economy case.

The project’s objectives are expected to address the following challenges:

• Investigate and identify the benefits of participation in GVCs at the sector and firm level.
• Examine whether GVC participation holds innovation and growth potential for Greek firms and sectors.
• Understand how GVCs interact with the Greek national Innovation System (IS) and the ways GVC participation can enhance and upgrade the country’s innovation capabilities.
• Address Greece’s catching-up in terms of integration and competitiveness in global markets.
• Highlight the pervasive structural weaknesses that hinder the catch-up process and the potential comparative advantages that may facilitate it.
• Inform the country’s GVC participation strategy through a coherent and integrated set of policy and managerial recommendations.

• 14th Panhellenic Conference of Chemical Engineering

Results from WP2 were presented in poster form in the 14th Panhellenic Conference of Chemical Engineering, held in 29-31 May 2024 in Thessaloniki, with 500
participants:

A full paper (Dimas, P., Stamopoulos, D., Panagiotopoulos, P., Protogerou, A. (2024), “Mapping the participation of Greece in global value chains” ) was included in the conference proceedings.

Additionally, a shorter investigation (Stamopoulos, D., Dimas, P., Tsakanikas, A. (2024), “Μeasuring regional participation in global value chains") into the participation of Europe's regions in global value chains was presented  and discussed with conference participants.

• 36th Annual EAEPE Conference

A working paper (Stamopoulos, D., Dimas, P., and Protogerou, A. (2024), “Participation and Positioning of Greek Sectors in Global Value Chains and Evolution of Their Trade Patterns’’) on the roles of Greece in the GVC network was presented in the 36th Annual EAEPE Conference, held in Bilbao (Spain) in September 2024. 

• Researchers’ Night 2024

The GRinGVCs team was in LIEE's kiosk with a poster presentation in this year's Researchers’ Night on 27 September 2024 at “Averof” building in the historical Patission building
complex, with the attendance of more than 2000 people, discussing the project's aims and objectives with interested member of the wider public.