Project GLORIVALS

GLObal RIVALrieS and Firm Dynamics in the Technology-Trade Multiplex

About the Project

The GLORIVALS project studies whether and how firms’ invention directions change as their import and export of products change due to structural transformations in international dependencies, in particular those related to increasing geopolitical fragmentation of the global economy. We measure the traded products exposure of inventions, and assess their elasticity to certain shocks. We do that by exploiting firm-level as well as text data, which allows to identify changes at a granular level and, therefore, to capture important but overlooked nuances in firms’ technology and trade positioning in global networks. Tracking changes in firms’ invention directions resulting from transformations of trade patterns has economic and policy relevance: as globalisation is reshaped by discourses of strategic autonomy, technological sovereignty and re-shoring, and by re-emerging rivalries amongst countries, GLORIVALS will produce first quantitative evidence of the dynamics at work, and capture the complex interdependence of the multiplex connecting the trade and technology spaces that shapes firms’ behaviours.