A resilience measure for the international nickel trade network

Abstract

The current rise in global trade protectionism and geopolitical conflicts have had a definite impact on the development of the nickel trade network. Therefore, this paper takes a comprehensive view of the nickel industry chain, considers four types of nickel trade in the upstream and downstream, and carves out a directionally weighted trade network. The evolution of the structural resilience of the nickel trade network over the period 2001–2021 is first measured under deliberate attack or random attack, and a three-dimensional spatially-weighted vector modelling framework based on the Data Envelopment Analysis common set of weight model is proposed to assess the resilience of the nickel trade network in terms of three dimensions: absorptive capacity, buffering capacity, and recovery capacity. The results show that structural resilience of the nickel trade network has improved over the period 2001–2021, but that the network will become paralyzed if 10%–20% of nodes are deliberately attacked. The absorptive capacity, buffering capacity, and recovery capacity of the nickel network are all low when major demand-driven nations like U.S., China, U.K, Germany, and Netherlands are attacked. Finally, recommendations are made to improve the security and stability of the nickel trade.