The interconnected wealth of nations: shock propagation on global trade-investment multiplex networks

The increasing integration of world economies, which organize in complex multilayer networks of interactions, is one of the critical factors for the global propagation of economic crises. We adopt the network science approach to quantify shock propagation on the global trade-investment multiplex net...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Starnini, Michele|||0000-0002-9161-5339, Boguña Espinal, Marian, Serrano, M.Angels
Format: article
Publication Date:2019
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repository:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/367258
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/367258
https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49173-2
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Algorithms
Multiplexing
International economic relations
Depressions
Algorismes
Multiplexatge
Economia internacional
Crisis econòmiques
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Física
Description
Summary:The increasing integration of world economies, which organize in complex multilayer networks of interactions, is one of the critical factors for the global propagation of economic crises. We adopt the network science approach to quantify shock propagation on the global trade-investment multiplex network. To this aim, we propose a model that couples a spreading dynamics, describing how economic distress propagates between connected countries, with an internal contagion mechanism, describing the spreading of such economic distress within a given country. At the local level, we find that the interplay between trade and financial interactions influences the vulnerabilities of countries to shocks. At the large scale, we find a simple linear relation between the relative magnitude of a shock in a country and its global impact on the whole economic system, albeit the strength of internal contagion is country-dependent and the inter-country propagation dynamics is non-linear. Interestingly, this systemic impact can be associated to intra-layer and inter-layer scale factors that we name network multipliers, that are independent of the magnitude of the initial shock. Our model sets-up a quantitative framework to stress-test the robustness of individual countries and of the world economy.