Ecological analysis of world trade

LEONARDO ERMANN; DIMA L. SHEPELYANSKY

PHYSICS LETTERS A

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2013 vol. 377 p. 250 - 256

0375-9601

Ecological systems have a high complexity combined with stability and rich biodiversity. The analysisof their properties uses a concept of mutualistic networks and provides a detailed understanding oftheir features being linked to a high nestedness of these networks. Using the United Nations COMTRADEdatabase we show that a similar ecological analysis gives a valuable description of the world trade:countries and trade products are analogous to plants and pollinators, and the whole trade networkis characterized by a high nestedness typical for ecological networks. Our approach provides newmutualistic features of the world trade.