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The past decades have witnessed big changes in international trade with the rise of global value chains (GVCs). Some countries, such as China, Poland, and Vietnam rode the tide, while other countries, many in the Africa region, faltered. This paper studies the determinants of countries’ GVC participation, based on a panel database of more than 100 countries from 1990 to 2015. Results from a three-pronged empirical approach show that factor endowments, geography, political stability, liberal trade policies, foreign direct investment and domestic industrial capacity are very important in determining GVC participation. These factors matter more for GVC trade than traditional trade.