The imperfect competition ladder in economic development: a new map of world trade using complexity analysis

This paper applies complex networks techniques to the study of world trade, with a focus on imperfect competition and development literature. The analysis uses a database of 4657 HS products and 183 countries to measure world market concentration by companies’ country of origin from 2007 to 2017. The empirical findings corroborate some of structuralist and development economists’ claims, namely: countries with high-income per capita focus on producing and exporting manufactured and complex goods in more concentrated markets, whereas countries with low-income per capita specialize in producing and exporting non-complex commodities in less concentrated markets