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Countries are increasingly incorporating foreign digital services in their exports, creating new and complex interdependencies between economies, which suggests a new channel for the expansion of global value chains (GVCs). To better understand how these new and complex interdependencies are evolving, we apply a novel methodological framework. First, using social network analysis methodology, we calculate several indicators that capture these complex network interdependencies. Second, we include these indicators in the second stage of a two‐step gravity model that explains (in the first step) dyadic trade flows of embodied digital services. Our motivation for this two‐stage approach is to avoid difficulties that traditional gravity models have in incorporating complex network interdependencies. Our empirical results suggest statistically significant effects of such interdependencies in the embodied digital services trade flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the phenomenon of international servicification of manufacturing from the period 1995 to 2011. By applying empirical techniques of Social Network Analysis and graph theory, we find that the network of flows of intermediate services embodied in manufacturing exports is still slightly dense and would not correspond to a traditional centre-periphery structure. The mapping shows a numerous, highly cohesive group of countries, with China, the USA and Germany as central economies and an increasing leading role of Asian economies, which would indicate their commitment to upgrading within global value chains. We go a step further by empirically analysing the impact of the countries' centrality in the global network of intermediate services on manufacturing competitiveness. Our findings reveal that, together with the level of embodiment of intermediate services into manufacturing exports, who the providers of those services inputs are is a key determining factor for manufacturing competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper assesses the restructuring of the Spanish electric power sector by analysing the performance of electric companies. To this end, we jointly analyse the creation and decomposition of the economic value generated by them before and after the reform, and its distribution among firms' stakeholders. Our results show that after the reform (i) the economic value created by productivity has substantially increased; (ii) technical change and change in the degree of vertical integration have been the main drivers of productivity change; (iii) the value transferred to consumers has decreased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]