Global iron ore trade network resilience assessment and shock response patterns of critical economies

Abstract

Iron ore is one of the critical strategic resources, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the trade system stability and predicting potential risks to analyze its trade network resilience and the shock response patterns of critical economies. This paper constructs the global iron ore trade networks (GIOTNs) using the CEPII database covering 219 economies in 2000–2023. We measure network resilience, node resilience, and explore the impact of economies on network resilience using two interrupt simulation strategies. Then, we identify the critical nodes, analyzing their shock response patterns and their driving factors based on the two-way fixed effects model. We report that: (I) The number of trade relationships, clustering, and information transfer exhibit an overall growth trend, with network density at a relatively higher level, suggesting that the GIOTNs have higher network diversity and connectivity. The fluctuation range of assortativity is relatively small, and there are obvious reciprocal trade relationships in the GIOTNs, resulting in higher network stability. Consequently, the resilience of GIOTNs is constantly increasing. (II) Developed economies have higher trade diversity, Asian economies have higher product demand, Australia and Brazil have higher product supply, the Netherlands and China play important trade bridge roles, China has stronger trade transmission power. (III) The impact of economies on the network resilience of GIOTNs not only exhibits obvious hierarchical characteristics, but also shows an obvious correlation under the import trade diversity and product supply, import and export trade diversity, trade diversity and trade bridge location. (IV) Critical economies gradually form seven shock response patterns that affect the resilience of the GIOTNs, empirical analysis indicates that these shock response patterns are potentially driven by the economy’s trade diversity, trade bridge position, and iron ore production, especially in the trade bridge position.