Google matrix analysis of the multiproduct world trade network

TL;DR

This paper applies Google matrix analysis to the multiproduct world trade network from 1962 to 2010, revealing trade asymmetries, sensitivities to price changes, and key roles of China and BRICS countries.

Contribution

It introduces a Google matrix approach to analyze the multiproduct trade network, accounting for trade volume contributions and connectivity, providing new insights into trade dynamics and community structures.

Findings

Trade contributions are asymmetric, with some products export-oriented and others import-oriented.

China and BRICS countries play a leading role in recent global trade.

Eigenstates of the Google matrix identify specific trade communities.

Abstract

Using the United Nations COMTRADE database \cite{comtrade} we construct the Google matrix $G$ of multiproduct world trade between the UN countries and analyze the properties of trade flows on this network for years 1962 - 2010. This construction, based on Markov chains, treats all countries on equal democratic grounds independently of their richness and at the same time it considers the contributions of trade products proportionally to their trade volume. We consider the trade with 61 products for up to 227 countries. The obtained results show that the trade contribution of products is asymmetric: some of them are export oriented while others are import oriented even if the ranking by their trade volume is symmetric in respect to export and import after averaging over all world countries. The construction of the Google matrix allows to investigate the sensitivity of trade balance in respect to price variations of products, e.g. petroleum and gas, taking into account the world connectivity of trade links. The trade balance based on PageRank and CheiRank probabilities highlights the leading role of China and other BRICS countries in the world trade in recent years. We also show that the eigenstates of $G$ with large eigenvalues select specific trade communities.