The past two decades have seen an unprecedented decline in transport costs, lower customs barriers and increasing integration of the world's economies. Such developments, compounded by rapidly developing information technologies, fuelled the fragmentation of production processes among countries with differing levels of development. The resulting and rapidly growing trade in intermediate goods illustrates a process commonly referred to as value chain development. All activities involved in the production chain of a commodity from the time of its design to its market entry as a final product are considered an integral part of the value chain, including marketing and transport activities. At the heart of this evolution is the vertical fragmentation of production steps. It calls for a thorough understanding of the global networks for the circulation of goods and services for a better control of costs and delays. The growing importance of large multinationals in the global economy, notably those active in the ICT sector, has contributed to this development (Del Prete, Giovannetti and Marvasi, 2016).
