Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

The paper examines how global production constraints and domestic institutions shape firm upgrading in Thailand’s EV and semiconductor sectors. It shows how institutional lock-ins limit upgrading while leaving room for Southern agency to generate change within global value chains.

Paper long abstract

As global production and trade regimes become increasingly fragmented and contested, emerging economies in the global South face growing pressure to pursue industrial and economic upgrading. Yet the capacity of Southern states and firms to exercise agency within global production networks remains uneven and structurally constrained. This paper examines how such tensions shape skills formation and upgrading trajectories in Thailand, a latecomer middle-income economy seeking to “catch up” through industrial upgrading in the electric vehicle and semiconductor sectors.

Drawing on qualitative evidence from firms and institutional actors, the paper analyses how domestic institutional configurations interact with global value chain (GVC) dynamics to structure opportunities for capability and skills upgrading. It shows how domestic institutions and global production dynamics generate “institutional lock-ins” that limit local firms’ movement into higher-value functions governed by lead firms in advanced industrialised economies. At the same time, the paper identifies “room for Southern agency.” Universities and locally embedded firms occasionally mobilise university–industry partnerships and targeted initiatives to support incremental upgrading of technologies and skills. However, their outcomes remain uneven.

Through a comparative analysis of firm-level experiences, the paper examines the conditions under which global production structures and domestic agency interact to challenge structural constraints and enable local firm upgrading. It argues that Thailand’s experience illustrates both the possibilities and limits of Southern agency in contemporary global development, challenging overly structuralist accounts that underestimate the potential for change in latecomer economies in the global South.