Multiresolution community analysis of international trade networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multiresolution framework for analyzing international trade networks, revealing hierarchical structures and linking countries' instability to their network inconsistency.

Contribution

It proposes a novel multiresolution community detection method that captures hierarchical trade structures and correlates network inconsistency with country instability.

Findings

Trade communities vary across resolutions.

Higher external instability correlates with greater network inconsistency.

The framework uncovers hierarchical organization in trade networks.

Abstract

The international trade network is a complex system where multiple trade blocs with varying sizes coexist and overlap with each other. However, the resulting structures of community detection in trade networks are often inconsistent and fails to capture the complex landscape of international trade. To address these problems, we propose a multiresolution framework that aggregates all the configuration information from a range of resolutions. This allows us to consider trade communities of different sizes and illuminate the underlying hierarchical structure of trade networks and its constituting blocks. Furthermore, by measuring membership inconsistency (MeI) of each country and conducting multiple regression analysis with various economic and political indicators, we demonstrate that there exists a positive correlation between the external instability of countries and their structural inconsistency in terms of network topology.