Professor Carvalho's research on how production networks amplify economic growth is cited in the Financial Times. Working with McNerney, Farmer and colleagues they used data from the World Input-Output Database to calculate the trophic levels of different industries in the US, China and other countries.

They study the effects of technology improvement in the setting of a production network, in which each producer buys input goods and converts them to other goods, selling the product to households or other producers, finding technological improvement is the most important cause of long-term economic growth.