Re: Visualizations of trade structures

The reason for the seeming "distance" between Mexico and the US is that trade 
figures by themselves do not accurately reflect the degree of mutual acceptance 
(or distance) within the regional or global context. Mexico sends 67 percent 
(in 1980) of its total exports to the United States while the United States 
sends only 7 percent of its exports to Mexico. What made it look  "distant" is 
the algorithm that reflects the discrepancy between these two figures. However, 
when RA (relative acceptance) measures are calculated, Mexico - US is 4.34; 
while US - Mexico is 3.87, which means that these two countries are mutually 
"interlocked" almost four times more closely than would be expected normally 
(on the average - using a null hypothesis analogy) across all countries. 

I commend Carl for his excellent work and a promising direction.


Quee-Young   Kim
Department of Sociology
University of Wyoming
kim@uwyo.edu 

 -----Original Message-----
From:   g kohler [mailto:kohlerg@3web.net] 
Sent:   Wednesday, March 20, 2002 6:58 AM
To:     Carl Nordlund
Cc:     wsn@csf.colorado.edu
Subject:        Re: Visualizations of trade structures

Hi Carl - that is quite a cyber-age visualisation that you've got there. Nifty!
I am wondering whether one could plug unequal exchange data into that and
visualize global unequal exchange / global exploitation. Looking at your graph,
Canada and Japan are depicted as being close to USA - indicating an intensive
trading relationship. However, Mexico and USA are depicted as "distant".  I
don't quite believe that. One reason for that could be that unequal exchange is
not taken into account.
      When visualizing unequal exchange, one could try two different methods -
(a) by volume (who loses the most transfer value? and who sucks in the most
transfer value?) or (b) by rates of unequal exchange. Tausch found that the two
aspects behave differently in empirical macro-sociological research.
    What is your PhD thesis about?
Yours\ Gernot Kohler



In response to :
Carl Nordlund wrote --------------------------------------------------------
Hello wsn list,

I previously asked if anyone had any trade statistics available - I got many
helpful replies, thanks for these! I am in great debt to professor
Quee-Young Kim for the data I have used so far.

I am currently experimenting a little on how trade statistics might be
visualized graphically, in order to simplify the identification of possible
structural exchange relations between economies. I have now imported the
data for a set of countries for two periods - 1980 and 1995 - into a small
computer program where I am using a spring-balance technique for balancing
and positioning of actors in the network. It is written as a java applet and
is run through an ordinary web browser - at this URL:

http://www.demesta.com/carl/temp/graph/td80_95.html
. . .snip




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