 Phase transition in the globalization of tradeM. Angeles Serrano Abstract: Globalization processes interweave economic structures at a worldwide scale, trade playing a central role as one of the elemental channels of interaction among countries. Despite the significance of such phenomena, measuring economic globalization still remains an open problem. More quantitative treatments could improve the understanding of globalization at the same time that help a formal basis for comparative economic history. In this letter, we investigate the time evolution of the statistical properties of bilateral trade imbalances between countries in the trade system. We measure their cumulative probability distribution at different moments in time to discover a sudden transition circa 1960 from a regime where the distribution was always represented by a steady characteristic function to a new state where the distribution dilates as time goes on. This suggests that the rule that was governing the statistical behavior of bilateral trade imbalances until the 60's abruptly changed to a new form persistent in the last decades. In the new regime, the figures for the different years collapse into a universal master curve when rescaled by the corresponding global gross domestic product value. This coupling points to an increased interdependence of world economies and its onset corresponds in time with the starting of the last globalization wave. Date: 2006-11, Revised 2007-01 Published in J. Stat. Mech. (2007) L01002 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:physics/0611159 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Papers from arXiv.org |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.