relatively narrow product categories is seen in several of the country’s principal GVCs exports and imports.<sup>27</sup> From the prior results on principal exports and imports, a few products of interest can then be selected for further in‐depth analysis, based on features such as the existence of two‐way trade, a high rate of annual growth, very high values of trade flows, a declining or reversing trade dynamic, a qualitative feature such as a forward or backward linkage with the complementary trade flow (e.g. with any of the principal imports, if the product is a principal export), or any combination thereof. In the case of Tunisia, seven products are selected based on these criteria to look into them in more detail: Color TV receivers; Ignition wiring sets for vehicles, etc.; Electronic integrated circuits; Other motor vehicle parts; Aircraft and helicopter parts, misc.; Men’s and boy’s trousers, woven; and Footwear parts, leggings, etc.<sup>28</sup> Based on the joint analysis of this additional information and the previously identified trends, conclusions can be drawn for each case study. These may include, along highlights of the main quantitative and qualitative trends observed, the formulation of hypothesis on what may be the underlying reasons for the observed dynamics (e.g. quality differences, complementarities, segmentation of destination markets, value addition). It is important to note that the above described process of selection of products of interest based on multidimensional quantitative and qualitative considerations cannot, because of its nature, be automatized for its inclusion into the WITS GVC Module. However, the automated interface does provide a simplified version of the above matching and selection process for the identification of products of interest, which consists in selecting the products with the largest exports by the country of interest.

For each of the identified products of interest, the five main export destinations and import sources for the country of interest (in our example, Tunisia) are obtained, based on market shares in the final year selected for the query. The values of such trade flows in the initial and final years of the sub‐period previously used to identify them as main exports or imports are then tabulated, together with the corresponding compound annual growth rate.

The last step of the country‐level analysis consists in identifying, for each of the products of interest, which are the largest competitors for the country for whom the dashboard is being made, either in the world market or, for more detailed insight, in its main destination market for each of such products (e.g. for Tunisia, its main destination market for “other motor vehicle parts” is France). In the former case (main competitors in the global market), the selection of the top five competitor countries is done by ranking all countries in the world based on their shares in global exports of the selected product of interest in the final year of the analysis period, and then selecting those with the largest shares. However, in some cases the top exporters of a certain product at the global scale may not be the most relevant competitors for the country of interest, but rather competition in a specific market (the main market for the country of interest’s exports of a certain product) may be more relevant. In this latter case, the identification of competitors is done by picking out the five largest import sources of each product (e.g. “other motor vehicle parts”) by the corresponding main destination country identified in the previous step (e.g. France), based on their share in the destination country’s total imports of the product in the last year of the

> 27 It is worth noting that the existence of two‐way trade in any of the principal exports does not necessarily mean that these are simultaneously among the country’s principal imports, or vice versa.

> 28 The identification of these products is based on a preliminary version of the Tunisia Dashboard based on SITC Rev. 2 nomenclature and reported data, reaching until 2013. Even though some differences may arise between trade dashboards built upon different versions of the MC‐GVC dataset in terms of nomenclatures and reporting country (choice of reported or mirror data), these are not anticipated to be substantive overall, even though they could be larger for specific countries and time periods.

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