International crop trade networks: The impact of shocks and cascades
Rebekka Burkholz, Frank Schweitzer
TL;DR
This paper examines how increasing complexity in international crop trade networks, driven by more interconnected countries and exogenous shocks, leads to greater vulnerability to failure cascades, with implications for policy.
Contribution
It introduces a model capturing higher-order trade dependencies and reveals hidden vulnerabilities in global crop trade networks over 21 years.
Findings
Trade networks have become more complex and interconnected.
Countries' export restrictions can trigger cascading failures.
Hidden dependencies influence trade stability and policy considerations.
Abstract
Analyzing available FAO data from 176 countries over 21 years, we observe an increase of complexity in the international trade of maize, rice, soy, and wheat. A larger number of countries play a role as producers or intermediaries, either for trade or food processing. In consequence, we find that the trade networks become more prone to failure cascades caused by exogenous shocks. In our model, countries compensate for demand deficits by imposing export restrictions. To capture these, we construct higher-order trade dependency networks for the different crops and years. These networks reveal hidden dependencies between countries and allow to discuss policy implications.
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