The evolution of the world trade web: a weighted-network analysis

Abstract

Networks, World trade web, International trade , Weighted network analysis, Integration, Globalization, F10, D85,

A microscopic study of the fitness-dependent topology of the world trade network

“…Data for the WTN can be found in various publications [29,30,8]. The concern of data validity is raised in various places [13,12,10,9,8]. Data on world trade should always be reported in two statements.…”

“…This leads to inconsistencies in the data analysis. Some suggest methods to approximate the true value of money flow by averaging over the existing data [13,12], while others [10,9] suggest to replace all export data with import data, because import data is believed to be more reliable [8].…”

“…Another issue is the way these disparities are corrected. Some [9,10] simply use only import data, which is deemed more reliable than export data, others [11,12,13] interpolate between reports of exports and imports.…”

“…That means that directionality of trade is taken into account, but the traded amounts are ignored. Others [7,14,12,15] have argued that directionality could be ignored because of the high reciprocity, i.e. export links are usually reciprocated with import links.…”

“…A weighted representation of the WTN has been investigated for example in Refs. [12,16,13]. Curiously, the additional information of edge weight is not always of greater explanatory power than binary network analysis [10,17].…”