The evolution of global soybean trade network pattern based on complex network

ABSTRACTABSTRACTIn this paper, a global soybean trade network (GSTN) is constructed based on the international trade data from 1987 to 2020. The results are as follow: (1) From 1987 to 2020, the scale of the network continued to expand, the number of trading countries continued to increase, and the trade links between countries gradually deepened. (2) The power function curve of the node degree distribution shows that the GSTN satisfies the power law distribution, which fits to be a scale-free network. (3) The global soybean export market is highly concentrated. The United States, Brazil and Argentina account for more than 80% of global soybean exports. China is the world's largest soybean importer. (4) The control ability of core countries in the GSTN has gradually declined, which is shown from that the importance of nodes has gradually weakened, while the trade between peripheral countries is gradually increasing, showing the phenomenon of trade multilateralism. (5) South America has become the global soybean export centre, and Asia has become the global soybean import centre. The trade status of North America has declined, and the overall strength of Africa and Oceania is the weakest.KEYWORDS: Complex networkSoybean tradeEvolutionGrain securityJEL CLASSIFICATION: F10F14F15 Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was funded by Science and Technology Project of Hebei Education Department (Grant No. ZD2022031), Research on the Development of Social Science of Hebei Province (Grant No. 20220202181) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Hebei Universities (Grant No. 2021YWF08).