The Dynamics of International Industrial Specializations

This chapter presents a new indicator of betweenness centrality, alternative to Random Walk Betweenness Centrality (RWBC) directly inspired by Economic Dominance Theory (EDT). It makes it possible to introduce a measure of structural changes in countries within the multi-graph of international trade. The chapter introduces indicators from the EDT of the centrality of countries and contribution of goods to this centrality. This helps to identify, over time, the phenomena of economic catch-up and reorganization of the productive specialization of countries. The chapter measures the betweenness centrality of the country from the multi-graph and analyzes the contribution of each layer to the centrality scores obtained by countries. Neighborhood indicators (degrees, strength) are very helpful in providing answers to central questions in international economics. The answers provide localized analysis elements that enrich a wider perspective adopted by the economic dominance theory. All these approaches are able to identify closeness between product exchange structures.