Analyzing Disruptions in the Global Transportation Trade Network
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Evans, Adam
- Area of Honors:
- Civil Engineering
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Alfonso Ignacio Mejia, Thesis Supervisor
S. Ilgin Guler, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Transportation
Shocks
Resistance
Resilience
Trade
Network
Imports - Abstract:
- Transportation commodities, notably motor vehicles, stand as a prime exemplar of globalization, occupying a central role within the broader framework of the international trade network. The extensive interconnectivity of the international transportation trade network accentuates its susceptibility to global import shocks – a sudden decrease in the volume of imports entering a country – which can have far-reaching consequences on a country’s economic activities. This research seeks to understand the dynamics of the international transportation trade network and characterize its shocks, enabling stakeholders to anticipate and effectively mitigate the risks associated with acquiring transportation commodities. We employ a data-driven methodology to characterize import shocks for all transportation commodities across 200 countries for the period of 1995-2018. These shocks are identified as breaks in the autocorrelation of individual product import time series. We also estimate resistance, resilience, and recovery time metrics for each commodity and country. Our results reveal an increasing trend in shock frequency over time across all transportation commodities and countries. We also observe that the leading importers of transportation products, including the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, and Japan, exhibit high shock frequencies for low shock magnitudes, and low shock frequencies for high shock magnitudes. Furthermore, our analysis shows a negative correlation between resistance and resilience across all transportation commodities, aligning with the resilience-resistance tradeoff observed in ecological systems. However, a negative correlation between resistance and recovery time exists, which deviates from ecological theory. This discrepancy suggests that while trade networks may initially mirror ecosystem behaviors in response to shocks, they deviate from ecological principles during extended recovery periods.