The International Trade Network

TL;DR

This paper analyzes 53 years of international trade data, revealing that the International Trade Network exhibits scale-invariant properties similar to other real-world networks, providing insights into global trade structure.

Contribution

It offers a detailed analysis of the ITN over time, highlighting its scale-invariant structure and contributing to understanding global trade network properties.

Findings

ITN has a scale-invariant structure

Trade network properties vary over 53 years

International trade data shows consistent network patterns

Abstract

Bilateral trade relationships in the international level between pairs of countries in the world give rise to the notion of the International Trade Network (ITN). This network has attracted the attention of network researchers as it serves as an excellent example of the weighted networks, the link weight being defined as a measure of the volume of trade between two countries. In this paper we analyzed the international trade data for 53 years and studied in detail the variations of different network related quantities associated with the ITN. Our observation is that the ITN has also a scale invariant structure like many other real-world networks.