On the Topological Properties of the World Trade Web: A Weighted Network Analysis

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the World Trade Web as a weighted network, revealing that most trade links are weak, the network is weakly disassortative, and highly traded countries tend to be more clustered, providing new insights into global trade structure.

Contribution

It introduces a weighted network approach to study the WTW, highlighting differences from binary analyses and uncovering new topological features.

Findings

Most links are weak trade relationships

Weighted WTW is weakly disassortative

Highly traded countries are more clustered

Abstract

This paper studies the topological properties of the World Trade Web (WTW) and its evolution over time by employing a weighted network analysis. We show that the WTW, viewed as a weighted network, displays statistical features that are very different from those obtained by using a traditional binary-network approach. In particular, we find that: (i) the majority of existing links are associated to weak trade relationships; (ii) the weighted WTW is only weakly disassortative; (iii) countries holding more intense trade relationships are more clustered.