Spatio-Temporal Heterogeneity in the International Trade Resilience During Covid-19: A Complex Network Approach

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have created immeasurable health and economic crises, leading to unprecedented disruptions to world trade and supply chains. The COVID-19 pandemic shows diverse impacts on different economies and markets that suffer and recover at different rates and degrees. This research aims to evaluate the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of strengths and vulnerabilities of international trade networks in the current crisis to understand the global production resilience and prepare for the future crisis. We applied a series of complex network analysis approaches to the monthly international trade networks at the world scale, regional scale, and country scale for the pre- and post- COVID-19 outbreak period from 2018 to 2021. The spatio-temporal patterns indicate that countries and regions with an effective COVID-19 containment such as East Asia show the strongest resilience, especially mainland China, followed by high-income countries (e.g., European Union), whereas low-income countries (e.g., Africa) show high vulnerability. The overall findings elicit the hidden global trading disruption, recovery, and growth due to the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19, International Trade Network, Resilience, Vulnerability