Abstract
Digital services trade has become an important channel through which countries participate in global production networks. However, limited attention has been paid to how digital services trade networks shape the dynamic evolution of manufacturing global value chain (GVC) networks. This study constructs digital services trade networks and manufacturing GVC networks by integrating sector-level services trade classification, value-added trade decomposition, and social network analysis. Using Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models (TERGMs) and Separable Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models (STERGMs), we examine how digital services trade affects the formation and persistence of manufacturing GVC linkages. The results show that bilateral digital services trade linkages significantly increase the likelihood of manufacturing GVC connections after controlling for country attributes, dyadic characteristics, endogenous network structures, and time effects. The STERGM results further indicate that digital services trade promotes both the creation of new GVC ties and the persistence of existing ties, with a stronger effect on persistence. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect exists across country groups, but is more pronounced when digital services trade linkages originate from high-income and advanced economies. At the industry level, the effect is strongest in high-technology industries, remains significant in medium-technology industries, and is insignificant in low-technology industries. These findings reveal that digital services trade functions as a cross-network mechanism that strengthens manufacturing GVC connectivity, consolidates existing production relationships, and creates favorable conditions for deeper GVC integration.
Funding
This work was supported [the Key Research Center of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Zhejiang Province—Research Center for Modern Port Service Industry and Creative Culture #1]; and [the New Key Specialized Think tank of Ningbo Municipality—Ningbo Digital-Intelligence Supply Chain Innovation Research Institute #2].
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
About this article
Cite this article
Liu, L., Wang, M. Digital services trade networks and manufacturing global value chain integration: a dynamic network perspective. Appl Netw Sci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-026-00827-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-026-00827-x