Abstract
In this paper, we analyse the bipartite Colombian firms-products network, throughout a period of five years, from 2010 to 2014. Our analysis depicts a strongly modular system, with several groups of firms specializing in the export of specific categories of products. These clusters have been detected by running the bipartite variant of the traditional modularity maximization, revealing a bi-modular structure. Interestingly, this finding is refined by applying a recently proposed algorithm for projecting bipartite networks on the layer of interest and, then, running the Louvain algorithm on the resulting monopartite representations. Important structural differences emerge upon comparing the Colombian firms-products network with the World Trade Web, in particular, the bipartite representation of the latter is not characterized by a similar block-structure, as the modularity maximization fails in revealing (bipartite) nodes clusters. This points out that economic systems behave differently at different scales: while countries tend to diversify their production—potentially exporting a large number of different products—firms specialize in exporting (substantially very limited) baskets of basically homogeneous products.
Highlights
Exporting activities of countries have remarkable signals of complexity
We analyze the bipartite network of Colombian exports using data at the firm level for the period 2010–2014 by employing tools developed within the field of information theory and complex networks analysis [3]
The results of our analysis refer to the year 2010 for both the CFP network and the World Trade Web (WTW)
Summary
Exporting activities of countries have remarkable signals of complexity. By tradition, the understanding of the international trade has been of interest to politicians and economists.More recently, with the surge of the complex networks theory, the understanding of international trade has been enriched, providing information about the structure of industries and how it relates with countries growth, income, and development [1,2]. Exporting activities of countries have remarkable signals of complexity. The understanding of the international trade has been of interest to politicians and economists. With the surge of the complex networks theory, the understanding of international trade has been enriched, providing information about the structure of industries and how it relates with countries growth, income, and development [1,2]. We analyze the bipartite network of Colombian exports using data at the firm level for the period 2010–2014 by employing tools developed within the field of information theory and complex networks analysis [3]. The bipartite network derives from considering the type of products exported by firms, ending up with two layers: firms and products. We are interested in the understanding of the projections on those layers, carefully dealing with the statistical significance of the similarity measure employed
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