The Global Office: How Globalisation’s Frontier is Shifting from Factories to Offices

This paper argues that globalisation’s frontier has shifted from manufacturing GVCs to services GVCs: from the Global Factory to the Global Office. While the Factory remains larger in gross trade, the Office is growing much faster. A heatmap of trade in intermediates shows that the Factory is bloc-shaped and dominated by China, whereas the Office is star-shaped and dominated by America. Gravity estimates show that distance matters less for Office exports, but time zones matter more: each hour of time-zone separation reduces Office exports by roughly 4%, while having no effect on Factory exports. Importantly, all of the world’s export-linked net job creation between 2008 and 2022 occurred in digitally delivered services rather than manufacturing, and trade-linked service jobs command higher average pay globally. The Factory-to-Office shift is also reshaping development. Most emerging economies have seen export-led growth tilt towards services, but their service exports are not yet large enough to drive overall GDP growth the way manufacturing did historically. The big picture is that globalisation’s second unbundling is running out of steam even as its third unbundling is powering ahead. The paper, which raises more questions than it answers, closes with the conjecture that the future of trade is services.