Trade Network COW (undirected)
| Quick info | |
|---|---|
| Data type | Numeric |
| Scale | Metric |
| Value labels | NA (no information available) |
| Technical name | econrel_trade_unidrected_cow |
| Category | Economic relations |
| Label | Trade Network weighted undirected |
| Related indicators | econrel_trade_existence_cow |
This data represents a time-varying weighted and undirected network in which countries are linked via trade in goods.
Coding rules
The trade data for the period 1880-2010 are from the Correlates of War Project (Barbieri and Omar 2016). According to the following regulations, the edge weights were determined for each year. The volume of trade between each two countries comprises the smoothed total trade in goods in one year and is therefore undirected. Due to the extremely different trade volumes, the trade values are logarithmically calculated. All figures were converted to current US $ to avoid an inflation-related densification of the networks: The edge weight of trade interdependence between two countries i, j is therefore
weight = log (trade-value + 1).
The trade-value is increased by 1 US $, so that missing trade-values or missing trade-relations do not cause the undefined logarithm of 0 to generate an error message, but the edge gets the weight 0. Further decisions concerning the construction of trading networks concern formerly common countries that have split up over time, e.g. (Austria-Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Serbia-Montenegro). In such countries the trade volume of the common years was divided according to the GDP after the division. In case of the USSR, this refers to the period 1922-1991, in case of the Baltic States 1941-1991 and in case of former Yugoslavia the period 1918-1992. "Small" states that once existed were deleted (e.g. Yemen People's Republic; Republic of Vietnam, Korea from 1880-1905, Kosovo, Zanzibar). Furthermore, because there are so many missings, we advise to include a dummy variable in in calculations which depicts whether a country was "existent" based on the COW definition.
Bibliographic info
Citation: Chapter 1: Diffusion of Social Policy edited by Windzio, Besche-Truthe, Seitzer, Mossig
Related publications: NA (no information available)
Misc
Project manager(s): Besche-Truthe, Fabian
Data release: NA (no information available)
Revisions: NA (no information available)
Sources
Barbieri, Katherine and Omar M. G. Omar Keshk. 2016. Correlates of War Project Trade Data Set Codebook, Version 4.0. Online: http://correlatesofwar.org.
