Global Value Chains studies development and prospects for its further elaboration

Modern international trade is characterized by a complex system of production and distribution links involving multinational companies from various jurisdictions and sectors of the global economy. At the current stage, international production is organized in the format of global value chains (hereinafter referred to as GVC), which involve an organized sequence of operations to create a finished product. Theoretical approaches to the study of GVC have been in a state of continuous development for more than four decades, reflecting current trends and specifics of the global economy. This study solves the problem of a comprehensive systematization of theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding and studying cross-country value chains, reveals the features of the current stage of their development in the context of the deployment of the processes of regionalization of production networks, the transition of developed countries to a digital and low-carbon economy, as well as the intensification of various crisis shocks. The methodological basis of the conducted research was a bibliographic and content analysis of fundamental works in the field of GVC, published from the 80s to the present. As a result of the analysis, it was found that modern research is more focused on the industry and company specifics of value chains, problems of quantifying cross-country and cross-industry relationships. At the same time, it was found that the existing theoretical and methodological basis of the GVC study insufficiently reveals the features of the transformation of value chains due to the increasing role of digital services in the production process. In our opinion, additional research is needed in the field of GVC resilience to external shocks, as well as an assessment of the potential benefits and costs of regionalization of economic relations.