Picciolo, Francesco and Ruzzenenti, Franco and Basosi, Riccardo and Squartini, Tiziano and Garlaschelli, Diego The Role of Distances in the World Trade Web. In: Signal Image Technology and Internet Based Systems (SITIS), 2012 Eighth International Conference on, 25-29 November, 2012, Naples pp. 784-792. ISBN 978-1-4673-5152-2. (2012)
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Abstract
In the economic literature, geographic distances are considered fundamental factors to be included in any theoretical model whose aim is the quantification of the trade between countries. Quantitatively, distances enter into the so-called gravity models that successfully predict the weight of non-zero trade flows. However, it has been recently shown that gravity models fail to reproduce the binary topology of the World Trade Web. In this paper a different approach is presented: the formalism of exponential random graphs is used and the distances are treated as constraints, to be imposed on a previously chosen ensemble of graphs. Then, the information encoded in the geographical distances is used to explain the binary structure of the World Trade Web, by testing it on the degree-degree correlations and the reciprocity structure. This leads to the definition of a novel null model that combines spatial and non-spatial effects. The effectiveness of spatial constraints is compared to that of nonspatial ones by means of the Akaike Information Criterion and the Bayesian Information Criterion. Even if it is commonly believed that the World Trade Web is strongly dependent on the distances, what emerges from our analysis is that distances do not play a crucial role in shaping the World Trade Web binary structure and that the information encoded into the reciprocity is far more useful in explaining the observed patterns.
| Item Type: | Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1109/SITIS.2012.118 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Globalisation, Akaike information criterion, Bayesian information criterion, World Trade Web binary structure, Binary topology |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HA Statistics Q Science > QA Mathematics |
| Research Area: | Economics and Institutional Change |
| Depositing User: | Caterina Tangheroni |
| Date Deposited: | 05 Nov 2015 11:48 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Mar 2018 17:03 |
| URI: | http://eprints.imtlucca.it/id/eprint/2817 |
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