Understanding technological change and innovative activities is important to comprehending the development and impacts of Global Value Chains (GVCs). On one hand, GVCs serve as powerful channels for sharing knowledge and building human capital, particularly in developing economies. On the other hand, advances in technology — including rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) — have further accelerated the expansion of GVCs. These technological developments have made production networks more complex and integrated, deepening economic relationships between economies and firms. In this course, we discuss innovations, GVCs, and some related labour market phenomena, such as income inequality, polarization, unemployment, etc, in growth frameworks. This is an active research area which generates a voluminous literature. Therefore, we focus on a small subsection of the literature, and inevitably leaving out a great number of interesting and important papers. The course content is arranged along several connected topics. In each of these topics, we will explore one or two “well-known” paper(s) in depth. We will delve into the technical aspects of some of these papers as well. I hope the process could provide some useful information and techniques for your own research work.