VARIETIES OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION MEMBERSHIPS AND STRUCTURAL EFFECTS IN THE WORLD TRADE NETWORK

Zhengqi Pan ()
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Zhengqi Pan: Singapore University of Social Sciences, 463 Clementi Road, Singapore 599494, Singapore

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2018, vol. 21, issue 02, 1-30

Abstract: To what extent does joint membership in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) matter for bilateral trade? How and under what conditions do the various types of IGOs — economic, socio-cultural and general purpose — influence bilateral trade between their members? How do complex interdependencies in world trade matter? Existing research tends to examine aggregate joint IGO memberships and has done little to analyze how specific types of IGO membership matter in trade. Using a detailed IGO dataset and a novel network analysis approach called the temporal exponential random graph model, I assess the importance of three main IGO types — economic, socio-cultural and general purpose — in helping members to establish major trading ties. The results provide support for general purpose and socio-cultural IGOs and point to the importance of network phenomena such as popularity, activity and transitivity effects. Moreover, joint economic IGO memberships exhibit slightly more complex relations with bilateral trade. A robustness test reveals that preferential trade agreements are significant in fostering trade, while the World Trade Organization and other economic IGOs such as development banks are not. This paper presents a nuanced way of analyzing IGOs and provides the impetus for the study of complex interdependencies in international trade.

Keywords: International trade; international organization; social network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1142/S0219525918500017

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