The Impact of International Crises on Maritime Transportation-Based Global Value Chains

Abstract

International trade has evolved into a complex network of global value chains (GVCs) that take advantage of the low cost and high scope of international maritime transportation (MT). Given the interconnectivity of GVCs, regional economic crises propagate rapidly. This paper uses complex network analysis to understand the impact of international crises on the evolution of MT GVCs. A novel representation of the maritime multi-commodity international trade network (MM-ITN) is proposed and analyzed as a weighted directed network. A suite of statistical network analysis tools are applied to understand its evolution over a period of 17 years. It is found that increasing the number of partners and the amount of trade over years is a generalized trend negatively impacted by crises. Few countries-sectors with enormous centrality make the MM-ITN vulnerable to crises. Resilience is slowly increasing over years. Crises show the importance of opening closed trading block and to flattening GVCs. The MM-ITN displays an increasing dissassortative behavior positive for global integration. MT GVCs have been reorganizing from mid 90s and stabilizing after 2008. The most important countries in the MM-ITN are USA, Germany, UK, China (after 2003), Japan, France, and Italy. The most important sectors are final demand, machinery\equipment, chemicals\rubber\plastic, electronic equipment, and motor vehicle parts.