This paper studies the statistical properties of the web of import-export relationships among world countries using a weighted-network approach. We analyze how the distributions of the most important network statistics measuring connectivity, assortativity, clustering, and centrality have coevolved over time. We show that all node-statistic distributions and their correlation structure have remained surprisingly stable in the last $20\text{years}$—and are likely to do so in the future. Conversely, the distribution of (positive) link weights is slowly moving from a log-normal density towards a power law. We also characterize the autoregressive properties of network-statistics dynamics. We find that network-statistics growth rates are well-proxied by fat-tailed densities like the Laplace or the asymmetric exponential power. Finally, we find that all our results are reasonably robust to a few alternative, economically meaningful, weighting schemes.

• Received 30 July 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.79.036115