Structure characteristics and formation mechanism of the RCEP manufacturing trade network: An ERGM analysis

The entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) on January 1st, 2022 marked the official launch of the world’s largest free trade area. The RCEP agreement will gradually release its strengths to the regional trade development and finally become one of the most important economic growth polarities. In this article, the complex network theory was introduced in the analysis of regional trade patterns and the investigation of trade relation-formation mechanisms. Based on the RCEP agreement, we constructed the manufacturing trade networks at both national and industrial levels, meanwhile, we explored the node and network characteristics combining with centrality, density, reciprocity, and distance indicators. Furthermore, by using the significance testing of the three-node motifs, we recognized the main trade patterns of the RCEP manufacturing trade. Finally, we established the exponential random graph model(ERGM) and performed an empirical analysis to conduct the formation mechanisms of the RCEP manufacturing trade networks. The results provided that the integrated trade pattern had a strong positive effect on the relation formation, while the imbalanced trade pattern was not easy to form the trading relationship.