Abstract
This paper models and analyzes international trade flows using open flow networks (OFNs) with the approaches of flow distances, which provide a novel perspective and effective tools for the study of international trade. We discuss the establishment of OFNs of international trade from two coupled viewpoints: the viewpoint of trading commodity flow and that of money flow. Based on the novel model with flow distance approaches, meaningful insights are gained. First, by introducing the concepts of trade trophic levels and niches, countries’ roles and positions in the global supply chains (or value-added chains) can be evaluated quantitatively. We find that the distributions of trading “trophic levels” have the similar clustering pattern for different types of commodities, and summarize some regularities between money flow and commodity flow viewpoints. Second, we find that active and competitive countries trade a wide spectrum of products, while inactive and underdeveloped countries trade a limited variety of products. Besides, some abnormal countries import many types of goods, which the vast majority of countries do not need to import. Third, harmonic node centrality is proposed and we find the phenomenon of centrality stratification. All the results illustrate the usefulness of the model of OFNs with its network approaches for investigating international trade flows.
Highlights
With the rapid pace of globalization process, the world economy is increasingly tightly interconnected by global trade flows
Guo et al [14] solved a fundamental problem of how to measure the distances between nodes in flow systems, and put forward several flow distances, such as the first-passage flow distance and the total flow distance. We introduce these effective approaches developed for open flow networks (OFNs) into the domain of international trade, and explore new features of open trade flow networks
We consider that using the mean first-passage flow distance (MFPFD) from “source” is more reasonable, because this distance reflects the trade topology and flow dynamics in the OFNs [14]
Summary
With the rapid pace of globalization process, the world economy is increasingly tightly interconnected by global trade flows. International trade in goods has grown from $6.4 trillion in 2002 to $17.8 trillion in 2012 (which is 24 percent of the global GDP), and the share is continuing to grow [1]. Countries benefit from specialization and engaging in international trade flows [2]. Evidence [3, 4] has shown that global flows have profoundly impacted on the competitive landscape in various industries and greatly boosted economic growth of various countries. Recent literature [1, 5, 6] has suggested that economic growth of a country can be explained by PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0142936. Recent literature [1, 5, 6] has suggested that economic growth of a country can be explained by PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0142936 November 16, 2015
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