A preliminary investigation on topological properties of technology exchange network

Abstract

In this paper we study the technology transactions as a complex network, with 40531 contracting parties as the nodes and 76303 contractual relations as the edges. After exploring its topological properties, we observe that this network is characterized by two remarkable features which are already observed in numerous real-world and artificial networks. One is the small-world property, with the small-world index of 606.106, and the other is its scale-free distribution, with the degree exponent of 2.093. We also observe that this network exhibits some features that are not necessarily shared by other networks, such as the anti-correlation between clustering coefficients and degrees. Our work extends the network analysis to the domain of technology exchange and provides a novel approach to study technology exchange systems.