Recognize the Trade Roles of Industrial Sectors

Emerged as a key technique in modern sociology, Social Network Analysis (SNA) helps investigate the topological structure of various complex systems related to human society [1]. In a lot of studies, Structural Holes Theory spans the fields of sociology, economics, and computer science. Burt introduced this concept in an attempt to explain the origin of differences in social capital, and found that positional advantage or disadvantage of individuals results from how they are embedded in neighborhoods [2]. For instance, individuals located on important transmission paths serve as brokers receiving non-redundant information from their contacts. In this way, they are granted with information superiority and possess advantages on top of gaining intermediate interests by connecting the other nodes.As an important issue in the field of economics, industrial globalization can be treated as the aggregation of numerous IVCs into a GVC network, in which there are various trade types for each upstream or downstream sector due to the existence of geographical location and tariff barrier, etc. Any sector may play different roles on different IVCs at the same time. Therefore, in order to find the micro-level explanation of structural holes in the ICIO network, we will revisit the trade roles of industrial sectors from the perspective of econophysics by redefining the industrial sectors’ function while linkage exists between their upstream providers and downstream consumers, as well as, by quantifying the ratio of each type of brokerage roles in this process [3].