Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.
PLoS One. 2011 Mar 31;6(3):e18443. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018443.
Throughout economic history, the global economy has experienced recurring crises. The persistent recurrence of such economic crises calls for an understanding of their generic features rather than treating them as singular events. The global economic system is a highly complex system and can best be viewed in terms of a network of interacting macroeconomic agents. In this regard, from the perspective of collective network dynamics, here we explore how the topology of the global macroeconomic network affects the patterns of spreading of economic crises. Using a simple toy model of crisis spreading, we demonstrate that an individual country's role in crisis spreading is not only dependent on its gross macroeconomic capacities, but also on its local and global connectivity profile in the context of the world economic network. We find that on one hand clustering of weak links at the regional scale can significantly aggravate the spread of crises, but on the other hand the current network structure at the global scale harbors higher tolerance of extreme crises compared to more "globalized" random networks. These results suggest that there can be a potential hidden cost in the ongoing globalization movement towards establishing less-constrained, trans-regional economic links between countries, by increasing vulnerability of the global economic system to extreme crises.
纵观经济史，全球经济经历了反复出现的危机。这种经济危机持续反复出现，需要了解其普遍特征，而不是将其视为单一事件。全球经济体系是一个高度复杂的系统，最好将其视为相互作用的宏观经济主体网络来进行观察。在这方面，从集体网络动态的角度出发，我们在此探讨全球宏观经济网络的拓扑结构如何影响经济危机的传播模式。我们使用危机传播的简单玩具模型，证明一个国家在危机传播中的作用不仅取决于其宏观经济总量，还取决于其在世界经济网络中的本地和全球连接特征。我们发现，一方面，区域规模上弱联系的聚类可能会显著加剧危机的传播，但另一方面，与更加“全球化”的随机网络相比，当前全球范围内的网络结构对极端危机具有更高的容忍度。这些结果表明，在当前全球化运动中，建立国家间较少限制、跨区域的经济联系可能会增加全球经济体系对极端危机的脆弱性，从而带来潜在的隐性成本。
