The nested structural organization of the worldwide trade multi-layer network

Abstract

Nestedness has traditionally been used to detect assembly patterns in meta-communities and networks of interacting species. Attempts have also been made to uncover nested structures in international trade, typically represented as bipartite networks in which connections can be established between countries (exporters or importers) and industries. A bipartite representation of trade, however, inevitably neglects transactions between industries. To fully capture the organization of the global value chain, we draw on the World Input-Output Database and construct a multi-layer network in which the nodes are the countries, the layers are the industries, and links can be established from sellers to buyers within and across industries. We define the buyers' and sellers' participation matrices in which the rows are the countries and the columns are all possible pairs of industries, and then compute nestedness based on buyers' and sellers' involvement in transactions between and within industries. Drawing on appropriate null models that preserve the countries' or layers' degree distributions in the original multi-layer network, we uncover variations of country- and transaction-based nestedness over time, and identify the countries and industries that most contributed to nestedness. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study of the international production network and other real-world systems.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Scientific Reports

References in corpus (11)

• Multilayer Networks
• The structure and dynamics of multilayer networks
• The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations
• Weighted Multiplex Networks
• The Dynamics of Nestedness Predicts the Evolution of Industrial Ecosystems
• Randomizing bipartite networks: the case of the World Trade Web
• Factors determining nestedness in complex networks
• How the Taxonomy of Products Drives the Economic Development of Countries
• Reconstructing the world trade multiplex: the role of intensive and extensive biases
• Ranking species in mutualistic networks
• Ecological analysis of world trade

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Robustness and resilience of complex networks
• Nestedness in complex networks: Observation, emergence, and implications
• Machine learning dismantling and early-warning signals of disintegration in complex systems
• Reconstructing commuters network using machine learning and urban indicators
• Unfolding the complexity of the global value chain: Strengths and entropy in the single-layer, multiplex, and multi-layer international trade networks
• Multilayer Network Science: from Cells to Societies
• Complexity, Centralization, and Fragility in Economic Networks
• Latent Dirichlet Allocation Models for World Trade Analysis
• Clustering coefficients as measures of the complex interactions in a directed weighted multilayer network
• (Unintended) Consequences of export restrictions on medical goods during the Covid-19 pandemic
• Modularity in Multilayer Networks using Redundancy-based Resolution and Projection-based Inter-Layer Coupling