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M. Haberbusch:
"Division of Labor in the European Union. An investigation into specializations of economies";
Betreuer/in(nen): G. Hanappi; Institut für Stochastik und Wirtschaftsmathematik, 2017; Abschlussprüfung: 13.10.2017.

Industrial specializations of a country, are the economic factors that drive and contribute
the most to the national economy and demonstrate their importance in the European
Union (EU). Industries have emerged over time and have shifted certain production or
services´ activities to certain countries, when outsourcing is relevant due to lower loans
or less strict regulations.
Input-Output (I/O) tables show how goods are traded within countries and can be traced
through all production steps. These goods cross international borders multiple times,
therefore a comparative advantage of industries based on commonly used export values is
not reliable any more. This approach is replaced by the better known Global value chain
(GVC) to identify the value added in different countries and steps. The GVC concept is
measured within global I/O tables, in particular the World Input-Output Table (WIOT).
This dataset is limited regarding the availability of data, the customizability and its
possible extensions. There are multiple data sources which are not interconnected at the
moment but have the capability to increase the research opportunities using the WIOT.
This thesis introduces a model for discovering industrial specializations of national
economies, especially those of the five biggest European countries, based on the GVC.
This will be done with the WIOT to measure their contribution to the overall economy
and compute economic key figures for the economy itself. The model is extended to take
any amount of countries which are available in the WIOT and any kind of sectors to set
up the research context. As the data only exists till 2014 it is mandatory to develop a
model to calculate and forecast future years in a reliable way to be able to determine the
development in short-term outlooks.
As the WIOT includes 44 countries and 56 sectors, it is necessary to develop transformation
scripts first and import the data needed for forecasts into the model, to be able to compute
each period and extract the important data out of the model visualized in figures. To
better understand the data and the development of industrial sectors the historical facts
of the top five countries are highlighted and discussed before describing the structure of
the WIOT and the technical approach of the GVC income.
The obtained data prove the functionality of the model and validate the results based on
common statistical tests. The model is able to find specializations and retrieve short-term
forecasts of these industries, but because of some limitations, compromises regarding the
selection of countries have to be made.