Complexity and Productive Structure in Latin America: A Network Analysis of Trade Patterns

Beatriz Calzada Olvera and Danilo Spinola

No 16, CAFE Working Papers from Centre for Accountancy, Finance and Economics (CAFE), Birmingham City Business School, Birmingham City University

Abstract: While plenty of existing literature focuses on Latin America’s trade relations with key partners, i.e. the US and China, and on its insertion into global value chains, intra-regional trade networks remain understudied. In this paper, we contribute to the understanding of the latter by looking at trade patterns in the region, focusing on how balanced and unbalanced trade occurs among Latin American countries and selected trade partners. We first develop an Index of Modern Balanced Trade (IMBT) that identifies balanced trade relations based on the share of complex goods that is exported and imported among two countries using data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (Hausmann & Hidalgo, 2014). Based on the IMBT, we then build two types of networks (Balanced and Unbalanced Trade Networks) in three different years that represent specific moments in Latin American economic history. We find that, as expected, most Latin American countries’ relations with partners outside the region remain largely unbalanced. However, our results also show that the Balanced Trade Network within the region has steadily expanded.

Keywords: Latin America; Trade Integration; Network Analysis; Economic Complexity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-net and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/12632/1/Olvera%2 ... alysi%5B28836%5D.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:akf:cafewp:16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAFE Working Papers from Centre for Accountancy, Finance and Economics (CAFE), Birmingham City Business School, Birmingham City University Birmingham City Business School, The Curzon Building, 4 Cardigan Street, Birmingham, B4 7BD, United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Research Publications Librarian ().