The world economy is changing at an increasing pace in the wake of the ongoing digital revolution. Modern information and communication technologies (ICT) strengthen forces of global flows of goods, people, information, and finance. We live in an increasingly interconnected world in which infrastructures composed of different techno-social system layers. Examples include transportation and mobility infrastructures, global supply chain networks, and financial networks. Many studies analyze the socioeconomic systems such as cascading failures and financial stability issues using network theory and agent-based modeling. The financial crises, for instance, triggered many studies about systemic risk caused by contagion effects via the interconnections in the global financial networks. Network analysis provides powerful mathematical tools for analyzing the global circulation of goods, resources, people, money, and information. The accessibility of new data and the advances in theory and modeling are providing an integrated framework that brings us closer to analyzing the behavior of socioeconomic systems from a new perspective. An agent-based approach has also proven useful in many applications. Agent-based modeling provides answers to questions where traditional analysis methods are weak, and it is leading to improved models across wide types of financial risks. This special issue is being launched at a time of ever-increasing connectivity and complexity in socioeconomic networks. The first article in the issue, ‘‘Towards capturing heterogeneity of supply network structures and their temporal transitions: an investigation of supply relationships in the Japanese automobile industry’’ by Tomomi Kito and Steve New, consider connectivity among car manufacturers (OEMs) and auto-parts suppliers in the