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

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 1990s 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.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Alternate title: Impact of International Crises on Maritime Transportation-Based Global Value Chains. This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AT020 International Trade and Transportation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Mesa-Arango, Rodrigo
  • Narayanan, Badri
  • Ukkusuri, Satish V
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 21p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crisis management; Economic conditions; International trade; Statistical analysis; Water transportation
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Marine Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01551413
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-4328
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 27 2015 11:23AM