Resilience Mechanisms of the European Trade Network During the Pandemic

Abstract

Subject and purpose of work: The economic crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic was fundamentally different from those of the past, with unforeseen implication on supply chains and European trade. As the literature regarding the pandemic is vast bibliometric techniques were used to find the most influential themes and authors. The aim of this paper is to test if cascading failure is possible when shocks arise in European trade. Materials and methods: To characterise the European commerce, network analysis was employed using Eurostat data of imports and exports in the following years: 2018, 2019 and 2020. Trade value indices were also used to characterised European trade during the pandemic and Enterprise Survey run by World Bank for in-depth, cross economies comparisons. Results: The results from the network analysis characterise the compactness of the network, showing that the European trade network is characterised by robustness. Conclusions: Cascading failure has a low probability of occurrence.