An Alternative View to the Global Coal Trade: Complex Network Approach

Abstract

The role of energy for the developmental process of nations is a known fact due to being crucial input for any phase of production of goods and services. That’s the reason why countries that are rich in energy resources also have strategic power in terms of the international trade of these resources. On the other hand, it becomes important to provide energy security for countries that are resource-poor. Although green energy has become preferred one, fossil fuel energy keeps its place as one of the most used energy resources. That's why in this study it is aimed to determine major providers and users of coal as a type of fossil fuel energy resources. It is vital to investigate the structure of global coal trade structure to determine the weaknesses and strength of supply and use of coal. Network approach provides a holistic view to the system analyzed and presents more realistic (high-degree) indicators to analyze it. In this study, global trade network of coal is analyzed from 2000 to 2017 via network analysis. Changing structure and evolution of global coal trade has been revealed via some topological parameters which are specific to complex networks such as density, clustering, assortativity/disassortativity, centrality and degree distribution.

Network Analysis of Economic Sectors: An Exploration of Structure using the HITS Algorithm.

“…As Kleinberg (2011) proposed, the HITS algorithm distinguishes authorities and hubs, enabling a nuanced assessment of node importance. This distinctive characteristic sets it apart from other methods and proves its efficacy in identifying crucial nodes, as demonstrated in studies on bilateral relationships (Semanur, Hüseyin, & Halil, 2020). The HITS algorithm excels in economic network analysis by identifying key players through hub and authority scores and detecting well-connected clusters.…”

Study on the Characteristics of International Coal Trade on Complex Network

“…The international coal trade network is a typical complex system involving many countries, the trade relations between countries are changing dynamically, and the complex network method has already been the extensive application in the coal transportation and coal price analysis, showing its strong suitability (Bhattacharya et al, 2008;Guan & An, 2017;Xia et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2019;Semanur et al, 2020). In the global trade system, what should be of concern is that how the system changes and the change characteristics of its members.…”

Triad Analysis of Global Energy Trade Networks and Implications for Energy Trade Stability

“…Here, we contribute to the literature by characterizing the topology of the global energy trade network, contrasting it with other known network topologies, and analyzing how certain aspects of that topology are thought to affect system robustness and vulnerability. Although previous studies have examined both aggregate energy trade [23,30] and trade networks of individual commodities, such as crude oil [31][32][33] and coal [34,35], we apply a topological technique to the study of energy trade networks that, to our knowledge, has not been previously used-triad analysis.…”