Research On International Oil Trade Network Based On Complex Networks

With the development economic globalization, international trade has increasingly influence on economies. As one of the essential energy in human production and life, oil plays an important role on the economic development. Because oil resources have the characteristics of scarcity, non-renewable and global distribution imbalance, international oil trade plays an important role on national economic development. In the process of international oil trade, every trade parties affect each other. The influence of a country's economic fluctuation and trade policy change is not only limited in the country, but also spread to the world. By using the complex network theory, we can well understand and grasp the dynamic development of international oil trade.International oil trade has the characteristic of complexity. According to the idea of complex network, international oil trade can be regarded as a 1-mode network. From the perspective of network construction, this paper first analyses the characteristics of international oil trade data, and respectively constructs the unweighted network and weighted network of international oil trade by taking countries as nodes, trade relationships between different countries as edges, and trade volumes as edge weights. Then, this paper displays the constructed international oil trade network by adopting the graphical theory method and matrix method, and is whether scale-free network by selecting degree distribution, and analyses their properties of clustering, order and heterogeneity by selecting clustering coefficient and network structure entropy as the indicators. Based on the above research, taking the international oil import and export trade data from 1995 to 2008 which published by International Energy Agency and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development as the initial data, this paper processes the data by using Excel and Ucinet, constructs oil trade unweighted network and weighted network of 30 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries, and displays the constructed networks in the form of diagram by using Ucinet. Finally, this paper analyses the constructed network topological structure by using Matlab. The results show that the oil trade network of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries is not typical scale-free network,has little clustering property and better order property. Besides that, the trade volume has a greater effect on import trade network.International oil trade is a complex network. The research of international oil trade network is helpful to understand and grasp the dynamic development of international oil trade, and forecast international oil trade development trend, thus it can provide evidence for the state to formulate relevant international oil trade policy.