World Input-Output Network

TL;DR

This paper models the global economic system as a complex network using the World Input-Output Database, revealing evolving connectivity, community structures, and key industries through network analysis techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a network perspective to analyze the world input-output system, applying community detection and centrality measures to uncover structural and temporal dynamics.

Findings

Increased cross-country connectivity over time

Emergence of regional communities, especially in Europe and China

Identification of key industries using network centrality measures

Abstract

Economic systems, traditionally analyzed as almost independent national systems, are increasingly connected on a global scale. Only recently becoming available, the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) is one of the first efforts to construct the multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables at the global level. By viewing the world input-output system as an interdependent network where the nodes are the individual industries in different economies and the edges are the monetary goods flows between industries, we study the network properties of the so-called world input-output network (WION) and document its evolution over time. We are able to quantify not only some global network properties such as assortativity, clustering coefficient, and degree and strength distributions, but also its subgraph structure and dynamics by using community detection techniques. Over time, we detect a marked increase in cross-country connectivity of the production system, only temporarily interrupted by the 2008-2009 crisis. Moreover, we find a growing input-output regional community in Europe led by Germany and the rise of China in the global production system. Finally, we use the network-based PageRank centrality and community coreness measure to identify the key industries and economies in the WION and the results are different from the one obtained by the traditional final-demand-weighted backward linkage measure.