Related papers: The role of distances in the World Trade Web
The Gravity Model is the workhorse for empirical studies in International Economies for its empirical power and it is commonly used in explaining the trade flow between countries; it relies on a function that relates the trade with the…
Spatially embedded networks are shaped by a combination of purely topological (space-independent) and space-dependent formation rules. While it is quite easy to artificially generate networks where the relative importance of these two…
Recent events such as the global financial crisis have renewed the interest in the topic of economic networks. One of the main channels of shock propagation among countries is the International Trade Network (ITN). Two important models for…
The World Trade Web (WTW) is the network of international trade relationships among world countries. Characterizing both the local link weights (observed trade volumes) and the global network structure (large-scale topology) of the WTW via…
Understanding international trade is a fundamental problem in economics -- one standard approach is via what is commonly called the "gravity equation", which predicts the total amount of trade $F_ij$ between two countries $i$ and $j$ as $$…
Motivated by the empirical analysis of the air transportation system, we define a network model that includes geographical attributes along with topological and weight (traffic) properties. The introduction of geographical attributes is…
Globalization is one of the central concepts of our age. The common perception of the process is that, due to declining communication and transport costs, distance becomes less and less important. However, the distance coefficient in the…
Economy, and consequently trade, is a fundamental part of human social organization which, until now, has not been studied within the network modelling framework. Networks are mathematical tools used in the modelling of a wide variety of…
This paper investigates whether the gravity model (GM) can explain the statistical properties of the International Trade Network (ITN). We fit data on international-trade flows with a GM specification using alternative fitting techniques…
In this paper, we investigate the statistical features of the weighted international-trade network. By finding the maximum weight spanning trees for this network we make the extraction of the truly relevant connections forming the network's…
In all empirical-network studies, the observed properties of economic networks are informative only if compared with a well-defined null model that can quantitatively predict the behavior of such properties in constrained graphs. However,…
The structure of the International Trade Network (ITN), whose nodes and links represent world countries and their trade relations respectively, affects key economic processes worldwide, including globalization, economic integration,…
In this paper, we investigate the mesoscale structure of the World Trade Network. In this framework, a specific role is assumed by short and long-range interactions, and hence by the distance, between countries. Therefore, we identify…
Global trade is shaped by a complex mix of factors beyond supply and demand, including tangible variables like transport costs and tariffs, as well as less quantifiable influences such as political and economic relations. Traditionally,…
The gravity model, inspired by Newton's law of universal gravitation, has long served as a primary tool for interpreting trade flows between countries, using a country's economic `mass' as a key determinant. Despite its wide application,…
Geometrical distance is an important constraining factor underpinning the emergence of social and economic interactions of complex systems. Yet, agent-based studies supported by granular analysis of distances are limited. Here, we develop a…
This paper studies the topological properties of the World Trade Web (WTW) and its evolution over time by employing a weighted network analysis. We show that the WTW, viewed as a weighted network, displays statistical features that are very…
Within the last fifteen years, network theory has been successfully applied both to natural sciences and to socioeconomic disciplines. In particular, bipartite networks have been recognized to provide a particularly insightful…
Here, we present the World Trade Atlas 1870-2013, a collection of annual world trade maps in which distance combines economic size and the different dimensions that affect international trade beyond mere geography. Trade distances, which…
This paper begins to explore the determinants of the topological properties of the international - trade network (ITN). We fit bilateral-trade flows using a standard gravity equation to build a "residual" ITN where trade-link weights are…