International trade distributions and their relation with random fragmentation processes

R. Bustos-Guajardo
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R. Bustos-Guajardo: Fideicomisos Instituidos en Relación con la Agricultura, Antigua Carretera a Pátzcuaro 8555, San José de la Huerta, Morelia, Michoacán, México2Universidad LaSalle Morelia, Av. Universidad 500, Tarímbaro, Michoacán, México

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), 2022, vol. 33, issue 06, 1-14

Abstract: A study of the distribution of the value of traded goods under the Harmonized System is presented. The ramifications of this classification system are found to exhibit an approximate power law decay, indicating complexity and self-organization in the nomenclature of traded merchandises. For almost all countries with available data, log-values of annually imported and exported goods are well described by three-parameter Weibull distributions. This distribution commonly appears in particles size distributions, suggesting a connection between random fragmentation processes and the mechanisms behind the international trade of merchandises. Analysis of the resulting values for the fitting parameters from 1995 to 2018 shows a nearly constant linear relationship between the parameters of the Weibull distributions, so that, for each country, the distribution of log-values can be approximately characterized by a single shape parameter β. The empirical findings of this paper suggest that specialization on trading a constant set of goods prevents the values of all traded merchandises from growing/decreasing simultaneously.

Keywords: Econophysics; international trade; Weibull; fragmentation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1142/S0129183122500772

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