Description:
<jats:p>Economic and social development requires major structural changes to
transform the composition of output, employment and international trade
(ECLAC, 2012). Through rising productivity in existing activities and by
moving towards more complex and technology-intensive sectors and processes,
structural change is expected to lead to higher long-term economic
growth, increased export competitiveness and well-paid jobs. In the past
two decades, the conceptual framework of value chains has been widely
disseminated as a tool to study structural change at the micro-level (Gereffi
and Korzeniewicz, 1994; Gereffi et al., 2005; Humphrey and Schmitz, 2012;
OCDE, 2013; Padilla-Pérez, 2014; Stumpo and Rivas, 2013).</jats:p>